Good day!
Would like to consults is there any setting for signal boost up? I am new to LoRaWAN and I bought a set of equipment for test, Robustel R3000LG as gateway and 2 Dragino sensor. However, i only able to detect the signal from my sensors in the range of 45meters. Would like to consults is there any important stuff i have missed out? by the way the test environment is a full residential area.
Thank you
“Signal Boosting” (increase of coverage) can be done by the antenna of the gateway and it’s position. There are several threads in this forum dealing with this problem.
The antenna of the gateway is one of the most important parts when trying to increase the range.
Like already said, the gateway antenna is very important, and I think in particular the placement of the antenna. Higher is usually better! The antenna should point UP.
The antenna should also be matched for the frequency it’s used on.
So verify this. An antenna designed for 434 MHz will work poorly on 868 MHz probably.
The same goes for the node antenna, check that the antenna is meant to be used for the LoRaWAN frequency. Perhaps stating the obvious, you can’t just use any old WiFi antenna on the node, might look the same but doesn’t work the same.
You should definitely be able to get more than 45 meters range.
Every now and then there are reports of people receiving packets with incredible range, in the order of hundreds of kilometers. This is usually the absolute farthest reception for some kind of record attempt and should not be used as a serious indicator of practical range.
I find it a bit hard to say what the practical range is, but perhaps up to a couple of km.
I don’t know how exactly you are detecting the signal. The LoRa modulation is relatively wideband (125 kHz) and low power (milliwatts), so on an SDR it might not be so easy to see.
The TTN console shows the energy that the node is received at, as received signal strength (RSSI) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). If I recall correctly, the practical limit I’ve seen is around -120 dBm for RSSI and -10 dB for SNR. Lower than that means reception becomes unlikely.
Nope.
The standard settings should be putting out signals at the legal maximum power.
Extreme short range, such as 45m, suggest issues with antennas or damadged modules, which in turn can be caused by issues with antennas.
thanks for the awesome information.
The range I can get in urban city areas is mostly ~1KM with high-rise buildings, train track,s and non-LoS.
I have an indoor gateway placed next to an apartment building’s window around ~20 meters in height
that can reach 700 to 800 meters on SF7
For LoS, the furthest I can get is 2KM, then I ran out of distance for me to test.
Check your gateway, what is your (1) RSSI, (2) SNR and (3) Daterate when you are at 45 meters?
thanks my issue has been fixed.