A Survey of Enabling Technologies of Low Power and Long Range Machine-to-Machine Communications

Low power and long range machine-to-machine (M2M) communication techniques are expected to provide ubiquitous connections for the wireless devices. In this paper, three major low power and long range M2M solutions are surveyed. The first type of solutions is referred to as the low power wide area (LPWA) network. The design of the LPWA techniques features low cost, low data rate, long communication range, and low power consumption. The second type of solutions is the IEEE 802.11ah which features higher data rates using a wider bandwidth than the LPWA-based solutions. The third type of solutions is operated under the cellular network infrastructure. Based on the analysis of the pros and cons of the enabling technologies of the surveyed M2M solutions, as well as the corresponding deployment strategies, the gaps in knowledge are identified. The paper also presents a summary of the research directions for improving the performance of the surveyed low power and long range M2M communication technologies.