When is LoRaWAN recommended?

LoRaWAN is a protocol with a good long-range performance. It is achieved thanks to the excellent receiver sensitivity of the LoRa modulation, which is possible due to very low data rates (few bps). The main drawback of LoRaWAN is the low data rate of the transmission modes with high Spreading Factor. The better range, the worse bitrate. This may be a problem in crowded networks, because the shared channel could be too busy because it can take several seconds to send each frame. The base station and the back-end server will try to find an efficient balance in the network thanks to the LoRaWAN algorithms. So:

• LoRaWAN is not advised for projects with a duty-cycle which require sending one frame every few minutes.

• The downlink data rate is very low too, so OTA programming is not possible.

• LoRaWAN is NOT recommended for real-time streaming. Transmission is not done in real time as there is a minimum delay for packet arrival.

• LoRaWAN is recommended for long-range device communications in cities, where base stations by some LoRaWAN operator are deployed, so the user can take advantage of this infrastructure.

• Otherwise, the user can purchase his own LoRaWAN-compliant gateways and deploy a private LoRaWAN network for a specific project.