BLE, Wi-Fi, Zigbee and LoRa trade range, power and data rate.
BLE (low power, 2.4 GHz), Wi-Fi (high data rate), Zigbee/Thread (mesh), LoRa (long range, low data rate, sub-GHz), NB-IoT/LTE-M (cellular) and NFC/RFID (short range). Choice trades range, throughput, energy, cost and ecosystem.
LoRa can reach 10 km with milliwatts but only kilobits per second.
Wireless protocols trade range, power and data rate, so choosing the right one decides battery life and what the product can do.
BLE, Wi-Fi, Zigbee and LoRa trade range, power and data rate.
Wireless protocols trade range, power and data rate, so choosing the right one decides battery life and what the product can do.
Wi-Fi offers high data rate and range at high power, while BLE uses little power and suits short bursts of small data.
It gives long range at very low data rates and low power, which suits infrequent measurements sent across large distances.
Typical applications include choosing BLE for a wearable that must run for months on a coin cell, using Wi-Fi for a camera that streams video and selecting LoRa for a remote soil moisture sensor across a farm.
Study "H-bridge motor drivers" first (topic 84 of 104 in Electronics & Embedded). It covers the groundwork this topic builds on.
Link budget. Duty cycle regulations. Security and pairing.
LoRa can reach 10 km with milliwatts but only kilobits per second.
The next topic is "Internet of Things", which builds directly on this one.
It is classed as Advanced in Electronics & Embedded (topic 85 of 104). It is an advanced topic. It assumes you are comfortable with the intermediate topics in Electronics & Embedded.
Want to practise? Open the interactive course for quick checks, quizzes, simulations and progress tracking.