Is the cellular standard roadmap the answer to LPWA Connectivity? Pt. 9: Power Consumption
Part Nine: Power Consumption
Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) devices are often battery powered. After all, the LP of LPWA stands for “low power”. Given that these devices are low cost, they do not warrant the cost of frequent battery replacement. Requiring labor to service these types of devices destroys the Return on Investment (ROI) the connectivity. Battery life of 10-20+ years is critical.
Thus, power consumption is extremely important to optimize for maximum battery life. Power consumption is an unknown until a finalized production system and endpoints are commercially available in the field. Cellular LPWA is designing the protocols with power consumption in mind, but they are years away from proving out the actual real-world measurements on a commercial system and have fundamental design issues regarding power consumption that will become apparent over time.
Power consumption is an unknown until a finalized production system and endpoints are commercially available in the field.