The Challenges of Industrial Connectivity
The first requirement for remotely monitoring, controlling, or maintaining equipment is that it be reliably connected. A single site going offline in a network of 50 can be costly: lost production, missed alerts, and unnecessary emergency trips.
The choice of connectivity technology is strategic. It depends on:
- Required data throughput — a few KB/h for temperature sensors, several MB/h for cameras or PLC VPNs.
- Equipment density — a single PLC or 500 sensors per hectare.
- Battery life — battery-powered devices (10 years) or devices with continuous power supply.
- Range — a 50-square-meter site or a 100-square-kilometer agricultural area.
- Criticality — drinking water alert (highly critical) vs. parking sensor (non-critical).
Comparison of Industrial IoT Connectivity Technologies
| Technology | Data Rate | Range | Battery Life | Latency | Ideal for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4G / LTE Cat-4 | 50–150 Mbps | Nationwide | Power | 20–50 ms | Automated systems, VPNs, cameras, routers |
| LTE-M (Cat-M1) | 1 Mbps | Nationwide | ★★★★ | 50–100 ms | Mobile sensors, trackers, wearables |
| NB-IoT | 200 kbps | Nationwide + indoor | ★★★★★ | 1–10 s | Static meters, fixed low-frequency sensors |
| LoRaWAN | 0.3–50 kbps | 2–15 km | ★★★★★ | 1–5 s | Long-range sensors, large areas |
| Sigfox | 100 bps | Nationwide | ★★★★★ | > 1 s | Short messages, beacons, meters |
| 5G SA | 1–10 Gbps | Dense areas | Power | < 1 ms | Robotics, AGVs, real-time connected factories |
| Wi-Fi 6 | 1–9 Gbps | 50–100 m | Power | < 1 ms | Sites with fixed infrastructure |
How to Choose the Right Connectivity Technology?
Industrial 4G/LTE: The Standard for Mission-Critical Sites
4G/LTE is the industry-standard technology for industrial connectivity: it offers sufficient bandwidth for PLC VPNs, OPC UA, video, and OTA updates; nationwide coverage; and latency suitable for real-time monitoring.
Key benefits for the industry:
- Compatible with all industrial protocols via VPN.
- Deployment in just a few minutes (plug-and-play with ZTP).
- Dual SIM for automatic failover.
- Compatibility with multi-carrier M2M SIM cards.
LTE-M and NB-IoT: Low-Power Cellular Technology
For battery-powered sensors with a long battery life, LTE-M and NB-IoT are the cellular LPWAN technologies standardized by 3GPP. They operate on carrier frequencies (no need to deploy a LoRa gateway) and offer greater range and building penetration than Wi-Fi.
LTE-M: suitable for mobile sensors, trackers, and devices that transmit data every minute. NB-IoT: ideal for meters that send a reading every hour or every day—with a battery life of 5 to 10 years.
LoRaWAN: Long Range, High Density
LoRaWAN is the solution for covering a large area (industrial site, agricultural area, urban network) with ultra-low-power sensors. A LoRaWAN gateway has a range of up to 15 km in open terrain and can collect data from 1,000 sensors simultaneously.
The typical architecture: battery-powered LoRaWAN sensors → LoRaWAN gateway → data transmission to the cloud via 4G. The Eziwan industrial IoT gateway can incorporate a LoRaWAN module to centralize both types of data collection.
Multi-carrier: The Key to Resilience
For critical sites, a single SIM from a single carrier is not enough. The multi-carrier M2M SIM automatically connects to the carrier with the best available signal. If a carrier goes down, the switchover is automatic and seamless.
The Eziwan Approach
Eziwan Connectivity offers multi-carrier M2M SIM cards with a private APN, a static IP address, and centralized fleet management. When paired with the Eziwan Gateway, they provide reliable 4G connectivity, automatic failover, and monitoring of the network status at each site via the Eziwan Cloud.