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Long Range Wide Area Network also known as LoRaWAN, is a wireless communication technology based on open standards allowing IoT devices to communicate over large distance with a long lifespan.
There are a lot of terms used nowadays to refer to the rapid growth of 'connected devices', connecting different types of 'devices' to simplify operations. This Industrial Revolution, Digitalization or Internet of Things require new communication technologies that allow for a long range combined with high energy efficiency.
LoRaWAN is a proprietary LPWAN connectivity protocol from Semtech, renowned for it's low power usage and high transmission range (compared to other LPWANs). By taking advantage of it's wireless modulation technology it has a high resistance to interference.
Another advantage of LoRaWAN is within it's data network, there are several public LoRaWAN network operators which you can connect your devices to or you can build your own Private LoRaWAN network.
The LoRaWAN protocol is an open standard and maintained by a non-profit organization called the LoRa Alliance, as a device creator and service provider Yobiiq is a proud member of this Alliance.
LPWAN
Low Power Wide Area Network is a type of wireless communication network, with a focus on Long Range and Low Power usage.
Besides LoRaWAN, we also offer NB-IOT and LTE-M devices.
LoRa and LoRaWAN
LoRa and LoRaWAN are often mistakenly confused as one another, even by service providers themselves. While both in general refer to the same concept and both must be utilized to benefit from the connectivity solution, there is a fundamental difference and they shouldn't be used interchangeably.
LoRa (Long Range)
is the 'physical' layer of the communication technology; it is used to establish long-range communication between devices.
LoRa relies on the Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS) modulation technology, once developed by the military and space industry.
The CSS modulation is the base of the extremely long-range and interference resistance of the communication.
By taking advantage of CSS you can "trade" a data rate for more range or power to optimize the performance based on specific requirements.
LoRaWAN is the network communication protocol that utilizes the LoRa technology layer, allowing to communicate with LoRaWAN gateways.
How does LoRaWAN work?
Most network protocols are build upon a "mesh" network architecture, meaning that end nodes relay information to other nodes and thus increasing the communication range. This architecture has some tradeoffs like less capacity, complex network mapping and shorter battery life (the communication layer in the node needs to send and receive data).
LoRaWAN uses a "star" network architecture, meaning that end nodes are not always assigned to specific gateways. Instead, the data that is being 'broadcasted' by a node is received by multiple gateways. Each gateway will then relay the data packet to the network server without pre-processing the data.
This puts the complexitiy of remove duplicate data packets, verifying data integrity and security checks are pushed to the network server; the network server typically is not limited on power.
Another difference is that, end nodes can stay in sleep mode for most of the time, reducing energy consumption because they do not need to listen for messages from other nodes continiously.
The LoRaWAN standard defines how a node should work, from the radio layer to the receiving server architecture.
The end-to-end security is also defined in the standard, and is non optional!
The payload of end nodes is not defined in the LoRaWAN standard, each vendor can freely decide how to define the payload of the device and if they make the format publicly available. This allows for a lot of freedom on how to utilize the constrained amount of data transmitted, but it can also create an issue for system integrators as all end nodes may have different ways to encode their data.
Technical Performance
LoRaWAN uses an unlicensed frequency band which is shared among several communication technologies, as such it can suffer from interference of other radio devices. All devices compete for the same resource "air time" when transmitting, and interference can be caused by damping of the signal by physical objects between sender and receiver. LoRaWAN offers long range and high penetration (ability to pass through physical objects) compared to other radio solutions.
End nodes transmit messages and they can get lost due to radio conditions or other causes, if that happens they are considered to be non-recoverable. LoRaWAN can achieve a high "per message reliability" by utilizing the available tools such as the possibility to let the network server acknowledge the reception of the message. The communication between the end node and the gateway can be optimized based on the distance between them, to minimize the interference with other end nodes by using the Adaptive Data Rate (ADR) mechanism.
Communication is bidirectional, but sending larger amount of data as a downlink (network to device) can be complex due to the data message size.
Yobiiq, your LoRaWAN solutions provider.
Yobiiq is a experienced and competent partner for LoRaWAN technologies, we distribute a wide range of end nodes with LoRaWAN compatibility.
There is a great potential for end nodes in almost every environment, if you are interested in products or services from our extensive range do not hesitate to contact us!