What is LoRaWAN®?

Brief reading about the technical features of LoRa and LoRaWAN®, current deployment and market positioning.

Long-Range, Low-Power

LPWAN (Low-Power Wide Area Network) is a groundbreaking segment of wireless communication tailored for IoT applications that demand battery-operated sensors and extensive network coverage, spanning hundreds of meters and beyond.

While short-range solutions like Bluetooth LE, Zigbee, and Z-Wave offer low-power capabilities, and long-range options like 2G/3G/4G deliver extensive reach at the cost of high power consumption, the perfect balance of long-range and low-power communication has remained elusive—until now.

This sweet spot has been effectively addressed by LoRaWAN®, a standard technology backed by a robust ecosystem, revolutionizing IoT connectivity and enabling scalable, energy-efficient solutions across industries.

Figure 1. Wireless communication technologies
Figure 1. Wireless communication technologies

Architecture

LoRaWAN® is the end-to-end wireless communication architecture that encompasses the LoRa® RF technology (the physical layer), the LoRaWAN® Link-layer that is used in between the end-device (the sensors/actuators) and the wireless Gateways, the Network Server which controls the Gateways, and the LoRaWAN® Backend interface used between networks.

As illustrated in Figure 2, higher level protocols can be transported as payload on top of LoRaWAN, either directly like the ZigBee cluster Library (ZCL) or MBus applicative frames, or through adaptation layers. The IETF SCHC protocol is used as the adaptation layer for IP protocols, such as the DLMS/Cosem protocol, widely used for metering.

Figure 2. End-to-end LoRaWAN® architecture
The LoRaWAN® link layer is designed in a flexible way in order to accommodate evolutions of the physical layer as long as this physical layer is bidirectional and exposes channels, power control and selectable modulation modes.

LoRa Phy

LoRa® is a modulation technique based on chirp spread spectrum (CSS) technology, offering enhanced resiliency against interference and exceptional sensitivity, with a link budget ranging from 155 to 170 dB. This capability enables LoRaWAN® gateways (base stations or access points) to provide coverage from approximately 1 kilometer in dense urban environments (e.g., downtown Manhattan) to tens of kilometers in open spaces, and even up to ~600 kilometers when deployed on LEO satellites.

End-devices are designed to operate at low power (typically consuming just tens of milliwatts), allowing them to function on unlicensed spectrum while achieving several years of battery life.

Unlicensed Band

Low power operation allows usage over unlicensed spectrum (ISM bands), such as 863-870 Mhz in EU, 902-928 Mhz in US, 915-928 Mhz in APAC, etc. Unlicensed bands are regulated and come with certain constraints to allow efficient and scalable use of the air resources, such as maximum transmission power and airtime. LoRaWAN® is designed to comply with these restrictions and can support application payloads in the 11-242 bytes range, and transmission data rates in the 300bps-50kbps range. The specific LoRaWAN® profile recommended for use in each spectrum regulation area is documented in the LoRaWAN® Regional Parameters Specification.

Flexible Bidirectional Communication: Class A, B and C

LoRaWAN® supports three modes of operation, tailored to the traffic patterns and power sources of devices. While devices of all classes can transmit frames to the network at any time, their ability to receive frames depends on their operational mode.

  1. Class A:
    Most sensors operate in Class A mode, which prioritizes maximum battery life and is ideal for devices that do not require asynchronous downlink commands. In this receiver-initiated scheme, devices open limited receive windows immediately after transmitting an uplink frame. Outside of these windows, Class A devices cannot receive downlink commands.

  2. Class B:
    Devices in Class B mode trade some battery life for the ability to receive downlink frames at regularly scheduled timeslots with predictable latency. Class B also supports multicast communication, enabling group firmware updates or use cases like fast demand-response applications in smart grids.

  3. Class C:
    Designed for mains-powered devices, Class C mode features a permanently open receive window, allowing devices to receive downlink frames or commands at any time. Like Class B, Class C also supports multicast communication, making it suitable for applications requiring real-time responsiveness.

Macro-diversity and Network Geolocation

LoRaWAN® networks follow a star topology, where multiple LoRaWAN® radio gateways are managed by a Network Server. This server can be deployed locally (e.g., for smart-building use cases) or hosted in the cloud. End-devices communicate with the network bi-directionally, enabling both sensor and actuator applications.

LoRaWAN® gateways are designed to be stateless, which not only reduces costs but also introduces macro-diversity: A single frame transmitted by an end-device can be received by multiple gateways within the same coverage area (see Figure 3). This significantly enhances the quality of service by increasing redundancy and reliability.

In contrast, meshed networks often suffer from catastrophic degradation of the Packet Error Rate (PER) as noise levels increase due to multi-hop communication. LoRaWAN®, by leveraging macro-diversity, can maintain a low PER even under high noise conditions in unlicensed spectrum bands.

Geolocation Capabilities
Macro-diversity also enables network-based geolocation using Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA) techniques with nanosecond precision. This approach provides end-device location accuracy within 20-100 meters without requiring additional hardware like GPS receivers or extra over-the-air signaling. The result is a cost-effective, power-efficient geolocation solution, making it ideal for tracking and location-based applications with low total cost of ownership (TCO).

Figure 3. Macro-diversity and collaborative networking
Figure 3. Macro-diversity and collaborative networking

Network Peering and Roaming

Gateways can belong to the same network or different networks, which can establish peering or roaming agreements to mutually enhance coverage. These agreements are facilitated through the LoRa alliance’s standardized Back-End interface..

This collaborative nature of LoRaWAN® is a critical factor in enabling the creation of low-cost, reliable networks that meet the demands of diverse IoT use cases.

Adaptive Radio

LoRaWAN® supports an Adaptive Data Rate (ADR) scheme, which allows the network to control transmission power, data rate, and channels used by the end-devices in order to optimize the reliability, power consumption, and scalability of the networks.
ADR will ensure that devices that are closest to Gateways will use faster datarates and lower power. This enables applications which need frequent communication like metering for electricity demand-response, by placing local “pico-Gateways” closer to the device.

Security

All of the aforementioned features are provided by following the state-of-art security, which relies on AES-128 cryptography. Mutual end-point authentication, data origin authentication, integrity and replay protection over-the-air, and end-to-end encryption of data payload are supported by relying on 128-bit cryptographic keys and standard algorithms. Additional layer of security hardening is possible by using SE (Secure Element) on the end-device side and HSM (Hardware Security Module) on the network side.

LoRaWAN® uses distinct secrets for network operations and payload protection: Users benefit from end–to–end security without a need for trusting the network infrastructure, which facilitates public-private network collaboration.

Figure 4. End-to-end LoRaWAN® security
Figure 4. End-to-end LoRaWAN® security

Firmware Update Over the Air

Firmware Update Over-the-Air (FUOTA) is an advanced feature offered by LoRaWAN®. It enables the secure, efficient, and reliable delivery of large files to a group of end-devices. This is achieved using a robust multicast protocol that leverages physical broadcast and incorporates Forward Error Correction (FEC) to ensure data integrity and reliability.

Openness

LoRaWAN® technology enjoys the benefits of being open: Operating at open frequencies (ISM band), being based on open standards that can be freely downloaded, supported by open source implementations, all driven by an open ecosystem nurtured by a large and growing industry forum, the LoRa Alliance®. A direct consequence of openness is the creation of a market with low-cost and high-quality products.

Private and Public Networks

This openness allows networks to be built not only by large tier-1 operators (e.g., Orange, Swisscom, KPN, Comcast MachineQ, etc.), but also  municipalities, enterprises, local organizations, and even private citizens for their own use. Public-access and private-use networks of varying sizes can co-exist and even collaborate to add their radio network resources to better serve the end-devices jointly.

An open peering/roaming interface between networks has been defined by the LoRa Alliance®: It may be used directly or via a hub between public/private networks, and it also helps solution providers with a need to deploy internationally to operate their own home network and roam worldwide with all other networks.

Deployments

Advanced feature set and openness of the technology led to quick adoption of LoRaWAN® across the globe. Figure 5 depicts the global public networks. Well-known use cases already started taking advantage of LoRaWAN®, such as Veolia rolling out 3 million water meters over Orange public network in France, a Slovenian factory managing its electric use with LoRaWAN® -connected sensors or Abeeway trackers being used for personnel tracking at a Petrofac site.

See more use cases on the ThingPark website.

Market Positioning

LoRaWAN® is not alone in addressing the LPWAN market. There are two major groups:

  • Licensed LPWAN (L-LPWAN) technologies: NB-IoT and LTE-M,
  • Unlicensed LPWAN (U-LPWAN) technologies: LoRaWAN®, Wi-SUN, SigFox, Wize, etc.

 

L-LPWAN technologies do not compete head-to-head with U-LPWAN technologies, rather they complement the latter and serve different market segments. L-LPWAN technologies use 5x to 10x more energy than LoRaWAN®, and draw much higher peak current from batteries, so they are not the primary technology for ultra-low energy, battery powered applications. On the other hand, L-LPWAN technologies can carry much higher traffic and support image and voice transmission. Typically, L-LPWAN technologies are the ideal backhaul technology for U-LPWAN gateways.

U-LPWAN technologies are also very attractive for private networks as anyone can deploy inexpensive infrastructure without the need for a license, and for dense sensor applications where there is little value add for using public networks. Therefore, LoRaWAN® can be seen as the “WiFi of IoT.” In the U-LPWAN segment, Wi-SUN mesh technology and Wize are established vertical ecosystems serving specific use cases: Electric metering for Wi-SUN and the European centric Wireless-MBus metering ecosystem for Wize. LoRaWAN® is the dominant horizontal technology serving all low-power IoT use cases with a vast global ecosystem. LoRaWAN®’s modern macro-diversity enabled star network topology is generally considered superior to mesh: It scales much better in presence of heavy usage of the unlicensed spectrum, and it is also easier to deploy as it does not need “all or nothing” dense upfront deployments of powered nodes. Networks serving all use cases also exhibit better return on investment over time.

Figure 6. Technology positioning
Figure 6. Technology positioning
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