What do you get when you combine the LoRaWAN®  protocol with Wi-Fi? A cost-effective approach to an Internet of Things (IoT) network deployment that offers significant opportunity for Wi-Fi providers and IoT developers. By employing a network mutualization scheme combining the LoRaWAN protocol and Wi-Fi connectivity, Wi-Fi providers can expand their business to provide coverage for both broadband applications and massive IoT deployments that leverage the (free) unlicensed radio spectrum.

The LoRa Alliance® is a global association responsible for designing,  promoting and certifying devices for the open LoRaWAN networking standard for low power, wide area networks (LPWANs).  LoRaWAN is an open networking protocol that delivers highly secure bi-directional communication, mobility and localization features used for Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. LoRaWAN networks operate in the unlicensed portion of the RF spectrum. People and companies broadcasting using this portion of the spectrum do not need a license from a governmental body to do so. With 148 LoRaWAN network operators in 162 countries, LoRaWAN networks account for more than one third of all LPWAN deployments in the world, according to industry research firm IoT Analytics.

Sebastien Lebreton, Principal Applications Engineer at Semtech, has been building and testing devices  featuring LoRa® chips for eight years. An expert in the field, he has been working with wireless technologies since 2001, and has regularly been called upon to teach engineers across the LoRa developer ecosystem how to be successful in this arena.

Over the years, I have explained how to test devices with LoRa® chipsets a dozen times or more during seminars, workshops and in informal meetings with customers. The need to write and publish these recommendations for the benefit of the industry has become more than apparent. So, sit back, enjoy a cup of coffee and read on.

In the How to Use LoRa Basics™ Station technical paper from Semtech, Anton Beitler provides in introduction to LoRa Basics Station including:

The LoRa Cloud™ collection of services are designed to ease the development of common tasks related to LoRaWAN® networks and LoRa®-based devices. Currently, this suite of services includes the following:

DLMS is the suite of standards developed and maintained by the Device Language Message Specification User Association (DLMS UA). The DLMS UA is an international and non-profit organization driving utilities and meter manufacturers to develop and support a common standard for data exchanges when it comes to smart metering. The DLMS suite supports a variety of wired and wireless communication standards, such as Cellular, PLC, Zigbee, WMBus, and Prime-PLC. DLMS has the flexibility to offer an application layer that is independent from the media layer, enabling the use of a single application over any of the supported communication technologies – or even a mix of them. For its part, the DLMS UA is now extending adoption to new markets and applications (such as private EV charging station and monitoring of smart infrastructure for electricity, gas and water) demanding a standardized data model and available application layer to enable more intelligent and interoperable devices.

In partnership with the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) and The Things Network, French start-up GreenCityzen is using LoRa®-based devices and deploying a LoRaWAN® network to provide an end-to-end solution to secure clean drinking water for refugee camps in Africa.

As you may recall, in May of this year Helium, Semtech, Arm, STMicroelectronics, and the global developer community at Hackster.io teamed up to give developers a little extra incentive build LoRa®-based Internet of Things (IoT) applications using connected devices designed to make the world a better place.

Semtech Proof-of-Concept Kits

The Semtech Smart Building and Asset Tracking Kits have been designed so that the value provided by LoRaWAN® in the smart building and asset tracking spaces can be easily validated by customers who need to quickly demonstrate the value of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions in these verticals.

We launched the LoRa® Developer Portal a little more than a year ago. Our goal was to provide a central hub for developers and solution providers in the LoRa ecosystem; a place to find education and training materials, best practices, user guides, and more. To this end, we have been providing the following resources: