LORAWAN - ®AN ADAPTABLE AND SCALABLE TECHNOLOGY
Our awareness of LoRaWAN technology is key to the developments and innovations in the field, ensuring a way forward to a Smart & Secure future.
Let's explore why LoRaWAN technology is trending, propelling us to a higher level. LoRa is essentially an RF wireless modulation technique, manipulating radio frequency waves with Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS) technology. It encodes information similar to the way dolphins and bats communicate! LoRa-modulated transmission is robust against disturbances and can be received across great distances.
The main advantages of LoRa lie in its long-range capability and affordability. For instance, in industrial spaces and smart cities, low-powered and inexpensive IoT devices (typically sensors or monitors) spread across a large area send small packets of data sporadically to a central administrator.
While these terms might sound complex, they are essential to be familiar with. The feasibility and flexibility of the technology depend on some factors, as illustrated below:
Spreading Factor (SF)
The chirp spread spectrum technology uses so-called “chirps”. The spreading factor (SF) determines the speed of a chirp. In general terms, the amount of spreading code applied to the original data signal is termed the “Spreading Factor”.
A lower spreading factor means faster chirps and, therefore, a higher data transmission rate at the same bandwidth and time. A higher SF means a broadcast has a higher range, at the cost of increased power consumption.
Lower SF means more chirps are sent per second, allowing you to encode more data per second. Higher SF implies fewer chirps per second, resulting in less data to encode per second. Sending the same amount of data with a higher SF requires more transmission time, known as airtime (Time On Air).
| Data Rate (Spreading Factor) | Sensitivity | Time On Air |
|---|---|---|
| SF7 | -123.0 dBm | 41 ms |
| SF8 | -126.0 dBm | 72 ms |
| SF9 | -129.0 dBm | 144 ms |
| SF10 | -132.0 dBm | 288 ms |
| SF11 | -134.5 dBm | 577 ms |
| SF12 | -137.0 dBm | 991 ms |
Larger spreading factors mean larger processing gain, and a signal modulated with a larger spreading factor can be received with fewer errors and travel a longer distance. LoRa uses unlicensed ISM (Industrial, Scientific, Medical) radio bands for network deployments.
From a security point of view, an end device can connect to a LoRaWAN network in two ways:
- Over-the-air Activation (OTAA): A device establishes a network key and an application session key to connect with the network.
- Activation by Personalization (ABP): A device is hard-coded with keys needed to communicate with the network, making for a less secure but easier connection.
Conclusively, the benefits of LoRaWAN are undeniable in today’s IoT landscape.