LoRaWAN Sensor Design | What is LoRaWAN Sensor | Vendors
This page covers basics of LoRaWAN sensor design. It mentions different components or modules used in design of LoRaWAN sensor. It mentions popular vendors of LoRaWAN sensor.
Introduction:
LoRaWAN is the short form of LoRa for Wide Area Network.
It uses LoRa modulation in the PHY layer and MAC layer which extends LoRa physical communication
compliant for internet protocols.
Typically LoRaWAN network consists of end devices, gateways (i.e. base stations) and core network server. All the end devices are connected with many gateways and communicate with single hopped connection. This is shown in the figure-1.
Figure-1: LoRaWAN network
Gateways are connected together and are interfaced with core network server using standard IP connections. All the gateways are connected with core network server. The communication is bi-directional in nature but uplink traffic (from end device to the network) is predominantly used for variety of use cases or applications. This type of network topology is known as "star-of-stars" topology.
The communication between end devices and gateways occur on different channels and data rates. The data rates range from 300 bps to 5 kbps for bandwidth of about 125 KHz. The different data rates support different coverage range. Refer LoRa tutorial.
Figure-2: LoRaWAN Sensor design
The figure-2 depicts simple design of LoRaWAN sensor. Typically it consists of power supply, MCU (Microcontroller Unit), LoRa radio and sensors.
• Power supply can be provided either using power plug from external or using battery.
• MCU consists of various functionalities as per applications of use.
It houses entire LoRaWAN protocol stack.
• LoRa radio consists of LoRa based transceiver, antenna and its matching circuits.
• Peripherals include different types of sensors as per use case or application
such as accelerometers, temperature sensors, proximity or IR sensors, humidity sensors etc.
It also includes relay or display devices.
• For example, LoRa parking sensor include proximity/IR sensor.
There are various ways LoRa Sensors are being designed. The figure-2 depicts two such cases viz. design based on LoRa module and design based on LoRa modem.
LoRaWAN sensor Vendors
Following are the vendors or manufactures of LoRaWAN sensor.
• GND Solutions India Pvt Ltd, Website: https://gndsolutions.in/
• ADEUNIS RF, France
• Webdyn
• Decentlab, GmbH
• Telog Instruments Inc., USA
• RISINGHF, China
LoRaWAN Related Links
Main page LoRa tutorial
LoRa Frequency Bands
LoRa protocol stack
LoRa MAC layer
LoRaWAN classes
LoRa features
LoRa Transceiver module