LoRa General Presentation
LoRa General Presentation
Network
Base Server
stations
Applications
Sensors
Modules
Agriculture
Smart Building
Supply Chain
0.5 MILE Radius / 0.75 sq. miles /20 sensors 15 mile radius / 706 sq. miles /18k sensors
www.lora-alliance.org
Become a member
LoRa Alliance All Member Meeting: https://www.lora-alliance.org/News-Events/Events
LoRa Alliance Challenge: https://www.lora-alliance.org/News-Events/Global-IoT-Challenge
Participate in events: IoT World, European Utility Week, CES, MWC, …
Power Tx 120 mA/20 Dbm 120 mA/20 Dbm 750 mA 35 mA / 8 Dbm 800 mA / 30 Dbm Unclear
Rx 10 mA 10 mA 300 mA 26 mA 50 mA
0.001 mA 0.001 mA 0.072 mA 0.003 mA 3.5 mA
Sleep
Range Indoor 3 Km 3 Km 3 Km 150 m 1.7 Km Unclear
Outdoor 30 Km 30 Km 30 Km 30 m 20 Km
Link Budget 156 Db/290 Bps 156 Db/100 Bps 172 Db/240 Bps 108 Db 147 Db
Sensitivity -134 dBm -126 dBm -142 dBm -100 dBm -117 dBm
Business model Eco system License 40% share Custom Custom Carrier Carrier
Installed base > 5 million < 200.000 < 500.000 > 200 M 0 0
Broadcast
Typical LoRa Use Cases
22
Smart Metering
Type of application – Deep Indoor, Fixed objects
Markets – Water, Gas, Electricity
Critical business issues
Legislative compliance
Meter reading
Leak detection, also in network
Reduce flow to manage consumption
Shut down flow for safety and damage control
Manage disconnections/reconnections
Manage updates for pricing
Increase public awareness
Industrial Asset Monitoring
Type of application – indoor fixed objects
Markets - maintenance and supervision of machine status
Critical business issues
Warranty management
Predictive maintenance
Avoid outage
Respond to temperature or air quality alerts
Stop machine from control room
Accessibility to assets
Logistics & Supplychain
Type of application – outdoor mobile objects
Markets – parcels, containers, pallets, valuable goods…
Critical business issues
Reduce cost and optimize execution
Enhance customer service
Lost and found
Management and cost of return goods
Quality of goods during transportation
Safety & Security
Type of application – indoor/outdoor objects and people
Markets – lone worker, smoke & intrusion detection
access control
Critical business issues
Health & Safety compliance
Building security
Time and attendance management
Home security
Jamming
Fill rate monitoring
Type of application – indoor & outdoor mobile objects
Markets – gas tank, cylinders, waste containers, tyres
Critical business issues
Customer service levels
Logistic cost
Complaints management
Predictive forecasting
Alerts management
Smart Cities
14 dBm
Module Manufacturers
Sensor Manufacturers
Base Station Manufacturers
Network Server Providers • Public Network Operator
• Private Network Operator
SX127X family
SX1301
Transceiver
LoRa Network Server
Low datarate
Slow Fast
Spreading Factor
Medium datarate
Slow Fast
High datarate
Distance
LoRa Gateway
LoRa Gateway
Unlimited growth enabled by ADR
0,74 sec
0,37 sec
0,2 sec
970 bps
530 bps
290 bps Bitrate
12 11 10 9 8 7 6 Spreading Factor
Adaptation to use case
Base station
Received by all base Cloud MAC Controller Variable RX window:
stations in range selects best base station 5.1 ms @ SF7
10.2 ms @ SF8 …
164 ms @ SF12
Bidirectional communication, class B
Downlink messages are optional
Classe B: all sensors are synchronized with the gateways and have regular
Downlink windows
Coordinated Sampled Listening (CSL): Network may send downlink packet
to node at any Rx slot
Rx Rx Rx Rx Rx Rx Rx Rx
Sensor
BEACON
BEACON
128 seconds
47
Importance of Location
Unique LPWAN feature
Indoor/outdoor
No battery impact, longer life span
Applicable to majority of applications
One off – determine installation location
Recovery – regular heart beat and high SLA when needed
Regular determination – all across supply chain and mobile assets in many market segments
High value add
Replacing existing capabilities
GPS – BOM and battery cost reduction ($5-$10)
Wifi – mainly Google ($0.50 USD / 1000 additional elements, up to 100,000 daily)
Network Operator
Application Router sending localization data to
customer server
Customer Server
Provide geo localization of devices through
webserver and applications
Location ready without GPS
LoRa uses Differential Time Of Arrival (DTOA) for location calculation
Triangulation based location determination
Outdoor accuracy < 50 M
Indoor accuracy < 75 M
Supports mobile sensors even when moving fast (fading/multipath)
TR1 Location
Server
TR2
Gateway TR3
Gateway
Gateway
Network infrastructure
Over-designed
TDOA Location
Localization is performed on data
Server transmissions from sensors
TX1 Gateways are synchronized in time with GPS
GPS
Location
TX2
API Accurate timestamps are added to received
Gateway TX3
data, along RSSI, frequency error, pointing
GPS
direction of antenna
GPS
Gateway For each message to locate, a localization
server collects the multiple receptions and
Gateway
solves for 2D position
FAQ - LoRa
How much data can be transmitted - What is the data througput with LoRa
What is the latency – how fast will data be delivered
Capacity - how many sensors can be supported
Capacity – what is the future strategy for ISM
Capacity – how much data can LoRa handle
Security – how is security and privacy managed
Penetration – how deep indoor does LoRa work
COMPARATIF LORA SIGFOX – PAYLOAD/DEBITS
How much data can be transmitted
UTILES
The payload with LoRa is flexible using the adaptive data rate
Packet size ranging for 1 to 242 bytes
Data throughput (data rate) is managed by network
Time on air (data rate) is not fixed to optimize spectrum usage
Latency – how fast
COMPARATIF LORA is data delivery
SIGFOX CONSOMMATION -
BIDIRECTIONNALITE
window
window
R
11mA pdt 164ms 0,5 message the sensor listens 1 - 2,2
time
Rx time •
x
μA.h @SF12 seconds for a downlink message
2
• 11mA pdt 5,1 ms
0,016 μA.h @SF7 The network latency (backhaul)
Downlink message depends on operator, typically milli
seconds
Is there a capacity limit
Radio networks have limited capacity
All radio channels in the same frequency band (868MHz) are occupied (6 channels of 125 KHz for LoRa)
When saturated the adaptive data rate does not allow further optimization (channel and spreading factor)
Theoretical capacity calculation
• Gateways are not a limiting factor : 36 simultaneous demodulations (6 channels times 6 spreading factors)
• Time on air (use of spectrum) depends on distance to base station
• Highest concentration of sensors will be in urban areas
• 70% of sensors on Spreading Factor 12 – longest range
• 20% of sensors on Spreading factor 10
• 10% of sensors on Spreading factor 8 – shortest time on air
• Example for 10 bytes payload per message and 1 gateway every 1 Km
• Maximum capacity per gateway per day 515 000 messages
• Maximum capacity per Km2 per day 164 000 messages
• For use case with 4 messages per day per sensor : 41 000 sensors maximum per km2
Example for Paris : population density is 21.347 per km2
Maximum number of messages of 10 bytes is (164.000/21.347) 8 messages per inhabitant per day
Increased density of base stations will grow capacity rapidly and provides scalability for operators
How much data can LoRa handle
LoRa technology has been built from scratch to serve the IoT
The adaptive data rate means change speed of transmission when there is a better
quality of the radio signal
The closer a sensor is to a base station the better the quality of the radio signal
Outdoor sensors typically have better signal quality as indoor or underground placed
sensors
The faster the speed of the radio transmission, called data rate, the shorter the
sensor consumes battery power
Faster transmission increases the capacity of the band as more messages can be
transmitted
LoRa can handle from 300bps up to 9,4kbps
The ADR is automatically managed by the network
Optimal security management
Roaming tariffs are not mandatory and bilateral, through the LoRa Alliance
Network security keys enable proper management of roaming
Message counters are available to allow for proper clearing
Commercial offers including roaming are at each operators discretion
Quality of Service
Handover like in GSM Networks does not exist with LoRa Networks
Communication is not continuous, sensors transmit only when
needed and receive responses accordingly
Messages are received by one or more base stations and forwarded
to a network server for further processing
Message transmission time is very limited (< a few seconds)
Why carriers prefer LoRaWAN