Low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) technologies play a pivotal role in IoT applications, owing to their capability to meet the key IoT requirements (e.g., long range, low cost, small data volumes, massive device number, and low energy consumption). Between all obtainable LPWAN technologies, long-range wide-area network (LoRaWAN) technology has attracted much interest from both industry and academia due to networking autonomous architecture and an open standard specification. This paper presents a comparative review of five selected driving LPWAN technologies, including NB-IoT, SigFox, Telensa, Ingenu (RPMA), and LoRa/LoRaWAN. The comparison shows that LoRa/LoRaWAN and SigFox surpass other technologies in terms of device lifetime, network capacity, adaptive data rate, and cost. In contrast, NB-IoT technology excels in latency and quality of service. Furthermore, we present a technical overview of LoRa/LoRaWAN technology by considering its main features, opportunities, and open issues. We also compare the most important simulation tools for investigating and analyzing LoRa/LoRaWAN network performance that has been developed recently. Then, we introduce a comparative evaluation of LoRa simulators to highlight their features. Furthermore, we classify the recent efforts to improve LoRa/LoRaWAN performance in terms of energy consumption, pure data extraction rate, network scalability, network coverage, quality of service, and security. Finally, although we focus more on LoRa/LoRaWAN issues and solutions, we introduce guidance and directions for future research on LPWAN technologies.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is essential in innovative applications such as smart cities, smart homes, education, healthcare, transportation, and defense operations. IoT applications are particularly beneficial for providing healthcare because they enable secure and real-time remote patient monitoring to improve the quality of people’s lives. This review paper explores the latest trends in healthcare-monitoring systems by implementing the role of the IoT. The work discusses the benefits of IoT-based healthcare systems with regard to their significance, and the benefits of IoT healthcare. We provide a systematic review on recent studies of IoT-based healthcare-monitoring systems through literature review. The literature review compares various systems’ effectiveness, efficiency, data protection, privacy, security, and monitoring. The paper also explores wireless- and wearable-sensor-based IoT monitoring systems and provides a classification of healthcare-monitoring sensors. We also elaborate, in detail, on the challenges and open issues regarding healthcare security and privacy, and QoS. Finally, suggestions and recommendations for IoT healthcare applications are laid down at the end of the study along with future directions related to various recent technology trends.

Low-Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) technologies are playing a pivotal role in the IoT applications owing to their capability to meet the keys IoT requirements, i.e., long-range, low cost, small data volumes, massive devices number, and low energy consumption. The creation of new public and private LoRaWAN networks necessitates the use of avoiding node limits and collision prevention measures. Designers of IoT systems confront difficulty in determining the scalability of a given technology, with an emphasis on unlicensed frequency bandwidth (ISM) transmission in densely populated locations. However, picking the best simulation software might be a challenge. To provide a conceptual overview of seven LoRaWAN simulation tools, this paper outlines their key characteristics and the sorts of experiments they support. LoRaWAN simulators, resource utilization, and performance evaluation are all covered in-depth in this report. Furthermore, we classify and compare the most important simulation tools for investigating and analyzing LoRa/LoRaWAN network emulators that have been developed recently. This article will be used to help other researchers decide whether LoRaWAN simulation tool is best for their specific requirements.