This topic describes the differences in core capabilities between Link WAN and self-built cores. It also introduces Device-to-Device (D2D) communication technology.
Capability differences
Capability | Link WAN (LoRaWAN) | Other LoRa platforms |
|---|---|---|
LoRaWAN international standard | Complies with the LoRaWAN standard. | Fragmented and incompatible standards result in high system maintenance costs. |
Technology | Alibaba Cloud independently develops and iterates the product in accordance with the standards defined by the LoRa Alliance. It currently supports LoRaWAN 1.0/1.0.2/1.1 and Class A/B/C. | These platforms are generally based on open source demo versions of a Network Server (NS). The evolution to support new protocol features is reactive. |
Performance | It supports persistent connections for hundreds of millions of devices and millions of concurrent connections. The architecture supports horizontal scaling. | Requires you to implement a scalable architecture. It is extremely difficult to schedule infrastructure, such as servers and load balancing, at the device granularity. |
Security | It provides dual-link protection based on LoRaWAN Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and the Alibaba Cloud IoT security channel. | Requires you to develop and deploy additional security measures. Ensuring data security for devices is a major challenge. |
Stability | It offers service availability of up to 99.9%. In case of a single point of failure, migration is automatic. | Requires you to detect breakdowns and perform migrations manually. The service is interrupted during migration. Stability cannot be guaranteed. |
Ease of use | It provides one-stop network management, real-time coverage area management, and seamless connection to IoT Platform and other Alibaba Cloud products. This allows for flexible and easy setup. | Requires you to purchase servers to build a distributed architecture with load balancing. It also requires a significant investment in human and material resources to develop the ingest, compute, and storage pipeline and build a complex network management system. |
D2D communication technology
Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is a communication pattern provided by Link WAN. By implementing long preamble wakeup and local data control features, it effectively meets the requirements of scenarios that demand low power consumption, fast response times, and local control, such as smart homes, smart door locks, and parking locks.
Compared to other LoRaWAN modes, D2D has the following features:
Feature | Class A | Class B | Class C | D2D |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Real-time performance | Poor | Fair | Excellent | Good |
Power consumption | Low | Medium | High | Medium |
Local communication | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | Support |
Deployment | Simple | Complex (requires deployment of outdoor gateways that support GPS) | Simple | Simple |
Node key | Standard Edition | Standard Edition | Standard Edition | Professional Edition |