LoRa adoption wide, and surprisingly mixed with similar technologies

#LoRa promises long range with battery life and low cost. But like any technology, it is not a solution to all challenges. In LoRa’s case, its because it is extraordinarily bandwidth limited, and upstream oriented. This anecdote from the Mobile World Congress suggests many vendors see it as a complementary technology rather than competitive to 5G alternatives such as NB-#IoT. Read more here: http://blog.3g4g.co.uk/2018/03/lora-is-quietly-marching-on.html?spref=tw

in 2017 Panometric designed a Class C LoRa device with USB interface, and deployed it on Actility Thingpark’s network. Even though the US based coverage is very slim, in this case we can deploy our own gateways on the network where the devices will be used.

A few things we learned about LoRa:

• It is very secure at the network level with several levels of encryption to protect at various network points.
• Given the security, provisioning can be complicated.
• The network can throw some surprising curves such as delays or changes in service levels.
• Given the low power, the range at 915 MHz is quite impressive.
• Devices are fairly easy to build using a module or your own design. It’s basically a 2 or 3 chip solution with one crystal.

If you think you have a LoRa application, give us a call.