LoRaWAN is a wireless telecommunication network which has been designed to enable communication between electronic devices. Basically, it is an LPWAN, acronym that stands for Low Power Wide Area Network. Due to its characteristics, which we will explore in this article, it is the ideal technology for the Internet of Things sector.

Read this article to discover four things you need to know to understand the potential and benefits of LoRaWAN.

How LoRaWAN is born

The network is based on a technology called LoRa (long range), developed by Semtech. Although the basic LoRa (the physical layer) is proprietary, the development model is open: the French company allows anyone to build networks, devices, and vertical services on its protocol. To promote the global spread of LoRaWAN, a foundation was established, Lora Alliance, non-profit association to which more than 500 companies adhere, including major players such as Alibaba, Google Cloud, and Cisco.

Thanks to its features, including the ability to connect sensors over long distances with low energy consumption, LoRaWAN is ideal for applications in the field of the Internet of Things. Furthermore, it can rely on secure data transmission due to the built-in AES-128 encryption, acronym for Advanced Encryption Standard.

The advantages of LoRaWAN

The virtues of LoRaWAN are numerous. First of all, we are talking about a technology that is easy to install and configure. Moreover, it is scalable, adapting to demand in a continuously expanding market: that of the Internet of Things, as we mentioned. A vast market, which according to the latest Ericsson report (the Mobility Report), will reach 22.3 billion IoT devices connected to the Network by 2024.

From the smart factory, to intelligent logistics, up to the fields of the "smart economy" (smart city, smart building, and smart agriculture), there are many sectors in which technology can be applied, leading to increased revenues, reduced activity costs, greater efficiency and safety in industrial processes, with a consequently high return on investment.

In summary, the main advantages of LoraWan are:

• Low implementation costs
• Secure and bidirectional communication
• Relatively low consumption
• Support for large networks with millions of devices
• Great versatility

LoraWan, technical info

The band commonly used in Europe for LoRaWAN is the ISM 863-870 MHz, but there is also a less used band at 433 MHz. The European regulation governing it is, in general, ERC-REC-70-3E. This regulation determines the power and transmission time of the technology.

By "transmission power" we mean the maximum power that a transmitter can use on the channel during communication (the commonly used value is 25mW, equivalent to 14 dB). While the duty cycle indicates the maximum transmission time for each hour of service.

From a technical standpoint, the LoraWan network architecture uses a star topology in which each of the nodes communicates with multiple gateways, which in turn communicate with the Network server. The main elements that characterize it are:

• The nodes
• The gateways
• The network server
• The application server

Communication between end devices and gateways is distributed across different frequency channels and data transmission speeds. 

The technology can also rely on multiple layers of protection: EUI64 key at the network and application level and device-specific EUI128 key. Meanwhile, as we mentioned at the beginning of the article, the technology utilizes the AES CCM (128 bit) standard for encryption and authentication. 

One last curiosity

The wireless telecommunications network, ideal for applications in the IOT field, has found fertile ground especially in the Netherlands.

In the nation of tulips, national coverage was achieved in a very short time: there are over 3000 gateways installed and approximately 10/13Mil devices.

More generally, according to the Lora Alliance website, there are 142 countries currently working on the development of LoraWan technology, while 121 operators are conducting business with the wireless telecommunications network. 

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