
Crazy LORA ranges today - wienke
http://rent-a-pilot.nl/archives/190
======
chuckledog
Some context: LoRa is a new, private and spread-spectrum modulation technique
which allows sending data at extremely low data-rates to extremely long
ranges. The low data-rate (down to few bytes per second) and LoRa modulation
lead to very low receiver sensitivity (down to -134 dBm), which combined to an
output power of +14 dBm means extremely large link budgets: up to 148 dB.,
what means more than 22km (13.6 miles) in LOS links and up to 2km (1.2miles)
in NLOS links in urban environment (going through buildings).

From [https://www.cooking-
hacks.com/documentation/tutorials/extrem...](https://www.cooking-
hacks.com/documentation/tutorials/extreme-range-lora-sx1272-module-shield-
arduino-raspberry-pi-intel-galileo)

~~~
lscotte
To me, this is not extremely long range, in comparison to a Pactor modem over
HF, which can reach over 1000 miles, as I've seen on a sailboat passage from
Hawaii to California. It requires more power - 150 watts or so, if I recall
correctly, and bit rates can be low as a few bits (not bytes) per second with
poor propagation. Being able to stay in contact with family in the middle of
the Pacific Ocean is pretty awesome.

~~~
ivanhoe
It's extremely long range for low-power devices. LORA is mostly used for
sensors, trackers and other miniature, usually battery/solar powered devices
that need to run for months or sometimes years unmaintained.

~~~
windexh8er
For those interested in playing around PyCom (MicroPython devices) are great.
As an example the LoPy 4 supports LoRa, Sigfox, Bluetooth and Wifi.

[https://pycom.io/product/lopy4/](https://pycom.io/product/lopy4/)

~~~
therein
I got one of those but only having one. I can think of some uses for it if I
had two but with only one, couldn't do much with it.

~~~
windexh8er
Keep in mind that's not exactly true. There are gateways that can be used such
as "The Things Network":
[https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/)

------
Moggie100
503'ing here for me, so here's an cache link:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://rent-
a-pilot.nl/archives/190)

Also, I've been part of the group looking at LoRa at Lancaster University for
some time, and am currently working on part of a commercial deployment too.
Here are a few papers published on the topic by Dr. Martin Bor, and
occasionally myself (all the top ones are LoRa):
[https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=WhN1gGwAAAAJ&hl=...](https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=WhN1gGwAAAAJ&hl=en)

~~~
fusl
Internet Archive link: [https://web.archive.org/http://rent-a-
pilot.nl/archives/190](https://web.archive.org/http://rent-a-
pilot.nl/archives/190)

------
kosma
I'm soldering a a LoRA-based board right now. During design process we
calculated the power budget and found out the power consumption is so absurdly
low the main factor is battery shelf life.

We live in the future.

------
souterrain
I’ve done Long Island to Virginia with 3W on a portable at 146 MHz, but the
range being seen on 800-900 MHz around Netherlands is quite amazing.

I would agree it must be tropospheric ducting; I’m not aware of any other
propagation mode that could be at work here.

~~~
themodelplumber
That's impressive. It must have felt pretty amazing!

There was a guy in one of the FM DXing groups on Facebook recently who posted
a video of a French-language Canadian FM broadcast station he picked up from
the Florida panhandle.

------
mhandley
LoRa has become the tool of choice for the high altitude balloon community. At
least in the UK, you're restricted to 10mW in the 434MHz band when airborne.
People have been pretty successful at getting (very) slow-scan video from
balloons at 30km altitude.

~~~
Maxious
[https://github.com/projecthorus/wenet](https://github.com/projecthorus/wenet)
is an example of using a RFM98W lora module with a raspberry pi/RTLSDR
reciever (albeit at 115kbaud in FSK mode, but 50mW of tx power gets ranges of
over 100km)

~~~
squarefoot
That is freaking interesting, 115kbps may seem low compared to usual broadband
connections, but it's a lot in the embedded world. Also it would be more than
enough to get very high quality voice communications. Codec2 which already
does wonders with a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of that rate comes to
mind. How long before someone puts LoRa encrypted walkie talkies on the
market?

------
d21d3q
Is it me or maybe you also have doubds about LoRaWAN use cases? (LoRa is
physical layer, way of encoding bits with rf, but you need protocol. LoRaWAN
is open standard, which is being implemented and used by TTN community)

So for me main drawback of LoRaWAN is limited number of ACKed packets (gateway
which can talk to thousands devices can use only 1% of airtime (simplified)
and you have to divide it by number of users
[https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/lorawan/duty-
cycle.htm...](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/lorawan/duty-cycle.html)),
so you are allowed to have 10 packets per day. Any other data can be send in
way called " send and pray"...

Would you build industrial device for telemetry while you can not be sure
about your data? For example energy monitoring with 15 min periods. You can't
be sure that your data arrives.

So ranges presented here is matter of luck but not reliable link.

Maybe ISM band limitations should adopt to LoRa which is more resistant to
errors.

Or protocol should be changed (symphonylink has protocol for unlimited ACKed
frames, OTA etc)

Just my 2 cents.

------
jszymborski
Archive link:

[https://archive.is/e7oGG](https://archive.is/e7oGG)

------
JabavuAdams
That article should probably start with a couple of sentences answering "What
is LORA?"

