LoRa and IoT
Hey folks! This is my first blog so please be patient.
So recently I received an Arduino MKR 1300 board in a competition and the box said "with LoRa connective" and that's when i heard this term for the first time. So I decided to research about the same and here is what I learnt.
LoRa stands for "Long Range". It is was developed by a company called Semtech. As the name suggests it's a technology which is used in long range data transmission. You must be thinking "Long range! Okay, but what's special about this technology? We can use gsm for that matter or even the internet. So why LoRa?"
As we all know IoT is the future. IoT is every where these days. A basic IoT system reads some data from a node and sends the data to a server/cloud using a gateway. This transfer of data can be done in various ways depending upon the application. Some come methods are bluetooth, wifi, gsm etc.
Now bluetooth and wifi have a very short range and gsm is a bit complex and consumes more power. So if you want so transfer data to long distances with minimum power consumption then we don't have a satisfactory method. So here's when LoRa solves the problem.
So LoRa can transmit data to long distances with very less power consumption. Let us see how this works.
So let asume that I want to read a sensor data from a farm to my house 500 meters away. It's clear that bluetooth or wifi won't work at this distance. So to achieve this, I connect my sensor setup to a LoRa. I also set up a LoRa at my house which would recieve the data. So these two LoRa nodes can now send data to each other.
Advantages of LoRa :
With the above pros LoRa also has some cons as well.
Disadvantages of LoRa :
Now a question might arise in you mind that how exactly is LoRa able to transmit data to such long distances without even consuming much power? The answer to this is CSS.
CSS stands for Chirp Spread Spectrum. CSS is a spread spectrum technique that uses wideband linear frequency modulated chirp pulses to encode information. A chirp is a sinusoidal signal of frequency increase or decrease over time.
So it's clear that LoRa can send data to longer distances using very less power but the amount of data and the data rate is less.
Even with the above mentioned disadvantages LoRa is well suited for IoT because we don't transmit a 4k video in IoT applications. We only work with sensor data which can easily be transmitted with LoRa even with less bandwidth and data rates.
I personally feel that LoRa technology has a great scope in the future and it will greatly impact the way we share data. What do you think?
So recently I received an Arduino MKR 1300 board in a competition and the box said "with LoRa connective" and that's when i heard this term for the first time. So I decided to research about the same and here is what I learnt.
LoRa stands for "Long Range". It is was developed by a company called Semtech. As the name suggests it's a technology which is used in long range data transmission. You must be thinking "Long range! Okay, but what's special about this technology? We can use gsm for that matter or even the internet. So why LoRa?"
As we all know IoT is the future. IoT is every where these days. A basic IoT system reads some data from a node and sends the data to a server/cloud using a gateway. This transfer of data can be done in various ways depending upon the application. Some come methods are bluetooth, wifi, gsm etc.
Now bluetooth and wifi have a very short range and gsm is a bit complex and consumes more power. So if you want so transfer data to long distances with minimum power consumption then we don't have a satisfactory method. So here's when LoRa solves the problem.
So LoRa can transmit data to long distances with very less power consumption. Let us see how this works.
So let asume that I want to read a sensor data from a farm to my house 500 meters away. It's clear that bluetooth or wifi won't work at this distance. So to achieve this, I connect my sensor setup to a LoRa. I also set up a LoRa at my house which would recieve the data. So these two LoRa nodes can now send data to each other.
Advantages of LoRa :
- Long Range - LoRa's physical range is more than 10 KMs
- Less power consumption
With the above pros LoRa also has some cons as well.
Disadvantages of LoRa :
- Low data rate - The maximum data rate is 50 kilo bits per second.
- Less bandwidth
Now a question might arise in you mind that how exactly is LoRa able to transmit data to such long distances without even consuming much power? The answer to this is CSS.
CSS stands for Chirp Spread Spectrum. CSS is a spread spectrum technique that uses wideband linear frequency modulated chirp pulses to encode information. A chirp is a sinusoidal signal of frequency increase or decrease over time.
So it's clear that LoRa can send data to longer distances using very less power but the amount of data and the data rate is less.
Even with the above mentioned disadvantages LoRa is well suited for IoT because we don't transmit a 4k video in IoT applications. We only work with sensor data which can easily be transmitted with LoRa even with less bandwidth and data rates.
I personally feel that LoRa technology has a great scope in the future and it will greatly impact the way we share data. What do you think?
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