# Low Power Wide Area Network, Cognitive Radio and the Internet of Things: Potentials for Integration
## 3 Low Power Wide Area Network
### LPWAN Technologies  
In this section, different LPWAN technologies are discussed. In addition to providing a detailed list of technologies, we identify specific LPWAN technologies that support CR functionalities. This exposition further emphasizes the budding consideration for CR and the need to commence widespread discussion about the integration of CR in LPWAN. To examine the potential for CR deployment, we identify different LPWAN technologies and their respective bands of operation, their current support for CR, their use of multiple channels, and their use of adaptive threshold techniques in their respective transceiver modules. In this regard, only the Semtech SX1276 transceiver module developed by LoRa provides an open source access to its underlying chipset technology. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l l l l} \hline \hline
**S/N** & **LPWAN Technology** & **Developer/Company** & **Year of Origin** \\ \hline
1 & MOBITEX & Televerket Radio & Beginning of 1980s \\
2 & ARDIS/DataTAC & Motorola & 1980–1990s \\
3 & AlarmNET (ADEMCO) & Motorola & 1990–2000s \\
4 & GPRS & Cellular Network Developers & 2000s \\
5 & IQRF & IQRF & 2004 \\
6 & Telensa & Telensa (Formerly part of Plextek Inc.) & 2005 \\
7 & RPMA & Ingenu (Formerly known as OnRamp) & 2008 \\
8 & Sigfox & Sigfox & 2009 \\
9 & Qowisio & Qowisio & 2009 \\
10 & Wi-SUN & Wi-SUN & 2011 \\
11 & LoRa/LoRaWAN & LoRa Alliance & 2012 \\
12 & Weightless & Weightless SIG & 2012 \\
13 & Symphony Link & Link Labs & 2013 \\
14 & Adaptrum & Adaptrum & 2014 \\
15 & NB-IoT/LTE-M & 3 GPP group & 2016 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Timeline of the origins of different LPWAN technologies. It is best to encourage open access opportunities to different LPWAN transceiver architectures in order to fast track research contributions pertaining to the integration of CR in LPWAN. Further discussion in this regard is provided in Section VI. However, while this section serves only as an overview of different state-of-the-art LPWAN technologies, nevertheless, additional details regarding the technical comparative analyses of these technologies can be found in [4; 15; 27] for the sake of the interested reader. A few highlights regarding a number of LPWAN technologies are presented as follows:  
1. **Sigfox:** Sigfox may be considered as the first major proprietary LPWAN provider in France [13]. Since its inception, Sigfox has proceeded in partnership with other network operators to ensure end-to-end LPWAN connectivity. They connect end devices to base stations via binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation on an ultra narrow bandwidth [4]. Sigfox technologies also provide CR capabilities, particularly in their base station infrastructures via SDR technology, which allows network and computing complexities to be managed via Cloud technology. Sigfox is quite popular with potentials to remain a strong competitor in the LPWAN market. 2. **LoRa:** Long Range (LoRa) is a LPWAN PHY layer technology developed by Semtech Corporation. Owing to its rich patronage by a wide range of researchers, LoRa easily seems to be the most popular and trending LPWAN access technology in the IoT market [4; 28]. LoRa may also be popular because of its open standard communication protocol called LoRaWAN, developed by LoRa Alliance. LoRa adopts a spread spectrum technique, which allows for an increase in its scalability and data rate. Specifically, it is based on a chirp spread spectrum (CSS) modulation scheme integrated with forward error correction (FEC) codes, which allows for longer communication range as against using the frequency shift keying (FSK) technique [29]. LoRa devices are also capable of adjusting their transmission power to meet the regulatory requirements. LoRaWAN protocol is based on the ALOHA scheme [9]. It provides a fixed channel bandwidth of either 125 or 500 kHz in its uplink channels, and 500 kHz in its downlink channels [30]. LoRa is presently deployed by other notable developers such as Symphony Link\({}^{\text{TM}}\) and LoRaBlink [31]. 3.