On the integration of LoRaWAN with the 5G test network

Abstract

The major focus of the low power wide area networks (LPWAN) is to provide energy efficiency and large coverage to Internet of Things (IoT) applications that do not require a large bandwidth. There are several LPWAN technologies that can enable these functionalities such as SigFox, LoRa Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN), Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT), and Weightless. The estimates of the number of wireless IoT devices in the near future are between 20 Billion to even 75 Billion. At the very same time the development and deployment of the 5th generation of mobile networks (5G) is rolling out. Among others, the new technology will deliver huge capacity which can be employed for enabling the backbone connectivity for LPWAN. Therefore, there is a need to have possibility to seamlessly integrate LPWANs with the upcoming 5G. In this work, we investigate how one can integrate the LoRaWAN with the 5G Test Network (5GTN) running in the University of Oulu, Finland. Furthermore, one of the options discussed is implemented in practice and its operation is verified. At the moment the implementation is used for wide range of other research activities beside this work, enabling a third party to bring their LoRaWAN compliant devices for testing and application development.