Future Industrial Applications: Exploring LPWAN-Driven IoT Protocols

The Internet of Things (IoT) will bring about the next industrial revolution in Industry 4.0. The communication aspect of IoT devices is one of the most critical factors in choosing the suitable device for the suitable usage. So far, the IoT physical layer communication challenges have been met with various communications protocols that provide varying strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, most of them are wireless protocols due to the sheer number of device requirements for IoT. This paper summarizes the network architectures of some of the most popular IoT wireless communications protocols. It also presents a comparative analysis of critical features, including power consumption, coverage, data rate, security, cost, and Quality of Service (QoS). This comparative study shows that Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) based IoT protocols (LoRa, Sigfox, NB-IoT, LTE-M ) are more suitable for future industrial applications because of their energy efficiency, high coverage, and cost efficiency. In addition, the study also presents an industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) application perspective on the suitability of LPWAN protocols in a particular scenario and addresses some open issues that need to be researched. Thus, this study can assist in deciding the most suitable protocol for an industrial and production field.