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Friday, September 30, 2016

What are the main differences between SigFox and LoRa technologies?

LoRa uses CSS (Chirp spread spectrum), Sigfox uses UNB (Ultra narrowband). It means that Sigfox signal has higher spectral efficiency and can mitigate the noise better. Sigfox uses DBPSK (Differential BPSK) for uplink & GFSK for downlink.
LoRa is owned by Semtech and thus, you have to use Semtech modules for your development. Sigfox is sharing their reference design with chip vendors, so everyone with Sigfox certification can sell the chips and get share of LPWAN "revolution".
Both came out of France!
Both have star topology.
Both use unlicensed ISM band.
Sigfox has higher range and one BS can connect much more devices.
Sigfox announced that they're entering 100 cities in the US! In April 2016, they've also announced their roll out plans in Australia & NZ, Brazil, Oman etc. LoRa is still dominant in Europe and it's deployment is up the the community. You can also buy your own base station (for 500Euro+) and use it.
Sigfox is very practical for infrequent transmissions and offers longer battery life. LoRa uses more bandwidth.
Both are trying to be the global IoT network and we'll see it in the future. Operators are leaning on NB-IoT & LTE-M, so we'll see who wins the "IoT war" in the future.
Using LoRa is free. Sigfox is almost free (costs 1 Euro per device per year).
LoRa has weaker security compared to Sigfox. Sigfox is good to prevent replay and man-in-the-middle attacks. Uses AES encryption with HMACs with private key that's embedded in the device + some sequence number. Though, this's not a big deal as 12 bytes of small packets cannot carry critical data (e.g. credit card info, pwd etc.).

Source: Quora

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