A technical overview of
LoRa
®
and LoRaWAN
™
Technical Marketing Workgroup 1.0
November 2015
LoRaWAN
™
What is it?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................. 3
What is LoRa®? ................................................................................... 3
Long Range (LoRa®) ........................................................................... 3
2. Where does LPWAN t? ................................................................... 4
Important factors in LPWAN ........................................................... 4
3. What is LoRaWAN™? ......................................................................... 5
Network Architecture ........................................................................ 5
Battery Lifetime .................................................................................. 6
Network Capacity ............................................................................... 6
Device Classes – Not All Nodes Are Created Equal ...................... 7
Security ................................................................................................ 8
4. LoRaWAN™ Regional Summary ...................................................... 8
LoRaWAN™ for Europe ..................................................................... 9
LoRaWAN™ for North America ....................................................... 9
LoRaWAN™ Hybrid mode for North America ............................ 10
5. Comparing LPWAN Technology Options .................................... 10
6. LPWAN Cost vs Legacy Systems .................................................... 11
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LoRa® Alliance Technical Marketing Workgroup
1
INTRODUCTION
e purpose of this document is to give an introductory technical overview to
LoRa® and LoRaWAN™. Low–Power, Wide-Area Networks (LPWAN) are projected
to support a major portion of the billions of devices forecasted for the Internet of
ings (IoT). LoRaWAN™ is designed from the bottom up to optimize LPWANs
for battery lifetime, capacity, range, and cost. A summary of the LoRaWAN™
specication for the dierent regions will be given as well as high level comparison
of the dierent technologies competing in the LPWAN space.
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LoRa® Alliance Technical Marketing Workgroup
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WHAT IS LoRa
®
?
LoRa® is the physical layer or the wireless modulation utilized to create the long
range communication link. Many legacy wireless systems use frequency shiing
keying (FSK) modulation as the physical layer because it is a very ecient
modulation for achieving low power. LoRa® is based on chirp spread spectrum
modulation, which maintains the same low power characteristics as FSK modulation
but signicantly increases the communication range. Chirp spread spectrum
has been used in military and space communication for decades due to the long
communication distances that can be achieved and robustness to interference, but
LoRa® is the rst low cost implementation for commercial usage.
Long Range (LoRa®)
e advantage of LoRa® is in
the technology’s long range
capability. A single gateway or
base station can cover entire
cities or hundreds of square
kilometers. Range highly
depends on the environment
or obstructions in a given
location, but LoRa® and LoRaWAN™ have a link budget greater than any other
standardized communication technology. e link budget, typically given in decibels
(dB), is the primary factor in determining the range in a given environment. Below
are the coverage maps from the Proximus network deployed in Belgium. With a
minimal amount of infrastructure, entire countries can easily be covered.
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LoRa® Alliance Technical Marketing Workgroup
3
WHERE DOES LPWAN FIT?
One technology cannot serve all of the projected applications and volumes for IoT.
WiFi and BTLE are widely adopted standards and serve the applications related to
communicating personal devices quite well. Cellular technology is a great t for
applications that need high data throughput and have a power source. LPWAN oers
multi-year battery lifetime and is designed for sensors and applications that need to
send small amounts of data over long distances a few times per hour from varying
environments
