What is the realistic range of LoRaWAN?
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@maqbool are you indoors or outdoors? This can make a very significant difference.
Once I was in a building where I was testing a device. Couldn’t get anything through at all. I then opened a window and placed the device next to it. Bam! Packets were received by gateways over 10 km away!
I have seen situations were even 100 meters was impossible (indoor gateway, indoor device), and other with ranges way over 10 km (outdoor gateway, outdoor device).
Like all radio technologies, LoRa likes line of sight. Any obstacle will reduce range, in very variable proportions depending on the obstacle.
Covering a full building can be a challenge, I’d be curious to read about others’ experiences.
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@maqbool First if your LoraWAN device is not static keep care to not activate ADR mode. In my previous jobs i manage a fleet of nearly 1000 device in fleet vehicule management for testing LoraWAN vs Sigfox.
I have the same result than @robert-hh in urban environnement SF12 have approximatly 3km range if professionnal base station is on the top of one building.
If your range is 250m it's very poor result (i can acheived this with two device at SF7, 2dbm tx power, line of sigth, 1/4 wavelength antenna).Current LoraWAN record (RX with a good antenna gain) is 832KM
https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/article/lorawan-world-record-broken-twice-in-single-experiment-1
https://ttnstaticfile.blob.core.windows.net/media/md_editor/image-1564056635245.large.jpg
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@maqbool I made a test once with a LoPy4 assembled in an aluminum box and equipped with the Pycom antenna driving around in my neighborhood. Transmission with SF12. The signal was picked up by my two gateways, but also various other gateways which I could located on the map. Result table attached. The longest distance seen was more than 8 km (HLK). But that was a set-up with a high gain antenna on top of a high building. The longest distance I achieved with my gateways was about 2.5 km. Both with a simple wavelength/4 ground plane antenna, one indoors, one outdoors at different sides of my place. But the reception varies a lot. There were places relatively close where I could not pick up a signal from, but the other gateways did.
coverage.pdf
