White Paper — How to Deploy a LoRa®-based Network for your IoT Application Page 4 of 5
Benefits of LoRa®
LoRa is the network technology used in this solution to connect the sensor nodes to a
gateway. There are competing technologies that may surpass LoRa in certain aspects,
but for the goals of this solution, LoRa was found to be an ideal technology.
LoRa is an LPWAN technology, which falls into the class that provide long range or wide
area networks at low power. The typical ranges of communication are from 2 to 1000 km,
dependent on technology. As a consequence of their higher range and lower power,
LPWAN technologies typically have very low bandwidths.
LoRa, in particular, has two main benefits over its competitors in the LPWAN space. The
first benefit is that the LoRa radio frequency used in the end nodes and the gateway is
one and the same; this reduces cost as the same design can be reused between the end
node and gateway. Also, while the gateway is generally more expensive due to its higher
processing performance and connectivity requirements, a more expensive radio than the
end nodes is no longer required. Another benefit of LoRa is that it is driven by a
committee, the LoRa Alliance, which provides the standards to which all LoRa vendors
adhere.
