WiiGate - The IoT Gateway

One of the most important aspects of IoT is "how" everything will be connected. Many IoT devices have been deployed in short-range areas such as smart homes and offices. However, the market is now requiring wider coverage networks where LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) is introduced, it describes a set of technologies for transferring very small amounts of data but spreading across a wide area. The LPWAN devices enables a long battery life of several years, reducing operational costs and maintenances.

LPWAN technologies can be divided into licensed and unlicensed bands: LoRa and SIGFOX work in unlicensed bands, while cellular IoT, such as NB-IoT and LTE-M are typically used in licensed spectrum. Furthermore, NB-IoT and LTE-M have been standardized and are part of the 3GPP Release 13.

Source: image from Samsung

The gateway connects remote LPWAN devices. It is the network coordinator in charge of things like device authentication, message buffering, communication scheduling, and bridging devices from LPWAN to enterprise network via traditional communication methods like Ethernet or Cellular network. Eventually, users could monitor and manage these devices and the associated assets with cloud-based management systems. For those licensed LPWAN, the telecom operators would take care and be in charge of setting up the gateways, aka, the base stations, as well.