Comment by noodlesUK
2 years ago
I'm not too knowledgable in this space, so my main questions are what are the advantages of DECT-2020 NR over something like LoRA (which I understand has license problems), zigbee, or 802.11ah (which is rarer but has less of a license issue)?
Why is this part of the 5G spec?
Lora is different from the others, in that it is for low-data-long-range. All those others are to connect a device to a local network. Lora is to connect to a remote network.
DECT (which I last saw in devices that I was programming in 2005), zigbee and 802.11 are all local network mediums.
802.11ac maxes out at maybe 60-80m, zigbee maxes out at around 80m and DECT (last I used it) maxed out at maybe 100m.
Lora still works up to 15000m LoS.
802.11ah, not 802.11ac.
good catch :-)
In respect of 802.11ah, it's still under 1000m, outdoors, IIRC. Great for the use-case of covering your factory in sensors, not so for the use-cases that LoRa is intended for.
From the article: "think: a million devices per square kilometer".
Range of DECT-2020 NR+ is comparable to Bluetooth Low Energy Long Range, which is plenty for a lot of applications but not in the same class as LoRa. But it's much higher bandwidth than LoRa and purportedly has determistic low latency, at least sufficient for audio, and they're marketing it for mission-critical and safety-critical applications.
I suspect this is aimed at faster speed than lora if they’re talking about directly connected to backhaul