Experiences with dampening of snow?

End Devices (Nodes)
1

Hello,

luckily, we still have a proper winter here with a lot of snow in the mountains, some snow in the valley. I was researching the question “How much is a LoRaWAN signal dampened if a sensor is below snow?” But didn’t find any resources.

I am aware that “below snow” can mean a lot:

  • 20cm fresh snow
  • 50cm wet snow
  • 5cm ice, 40cm wet snow and 80cm dry snow
  • …

Does anyone have experience with this? I am not neccessarily talking about a device directly covered in snow, it could also for example be a device underground, and the snow is on top of the cover.

Thanks & best regards
Philipp

2

I would not expect the modulation itself to play a large role, it is mostly the central frequency which decide how much the signal is attenuated. You can take a look at this paper : https://www.comsol.nl/paper/download/83543/ayuso_paper.pdf giving attenuation at 400MHz and 2.4GHz : for LoRaWAN at 900MHz It should be slightly worse than 400 MHz.
But overall for cases of less than 5 meter of snow it does not look that bad if you compare to the air model.

1 Like