Query: Is this deployment possible with LoRa?

End Devices (Nodes) Hardware
1

Hi folks,

I have been reading about LoRa for some time however I fail to understand clearly the limitations as far as signal path loss is concerned. Before I start designing a solution using LoRa I need to be sure that signal propagation will be reliable considering my deployment scenario. At this point of time, I do not have access to the deployment location for doing real time trials, so I have to rely on previous analysis done by folks using different deployment scenarios which doesn’t seem to give satisfactory evidence. Hence, I’m looking for inputs from this forum from your real time experiences on the field.

Please have a look at the attached image. It depicts a sample scenario. This is India specific where in space is very limited and the area is densely populated. Let me share with you few parameters describing the scenario. I hope this will be sufficient for you to have some inputs. If not let me know if you should need more information around this.

map

  • The red dots are LoRa nodes. The green one is Gateway.

  • Each building will have a node sitting at the bottom at a height of 1 meter. Gateway will be on a different building and sitting on roof top at a height of 5 meter. One gateway will serve approximately 250 nodes. Each node will send data to gateway 3-4 times daily and at different times throughout the day.

  • Each building is 12 floors with approximate height of 40 meters. This makes Gateway height as 40 + 5 = 45 meters. Each floor in a building will approximately have 4 to 6 flats.

  • Building walls are made up of concrete and wall width is approximately 8 - 12 inches

  • Distance between farthest node and gateway is 400 meters

  • For most of the nodes, LoRa signal will have to penetrate 3 to 5 buildings to reach the gateway.

If this scenario is not possible, what would be my options if I deploy another node on each building’s roof top to talk with gateway [assuming line of sight] and have the bottom nodes communicate with the top nodes [instead of communicating with gateway]. In this situation, distance between bottom node and top node will be 30 to 100 meters. Is it possible to do p2p between the nodes and have the top node also talk with gateway to rely data? This way bottom node need not talk with gateway directly. If p2p is not possible, what other technology or option can be explored for communication between the nodes?

Appreciate your help.

2

its possible with lorawan imho
maybe, but that depends on measurements, add more gateways at strategical places.

forget p2p between 250 nodes ect.

3

Hi BoRRoZ,

I’m not thinking about p2p between 250 nodes. What I’m thinking is, p2p between a pair of two nodes and have one node talk with gateway as well? Like this -

p2p

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and what are you measuring in with these nodes ?

5

Liquid level. The node will just send a couple of bytes of data.

6

What do you gain effectively ? , I’m looking at your drawing now.
(if node 1 breaks… you have 2 or more problems)

Go for a lorawan setup… just works with a lot of support and integrations with the TTN backend So you can create nice dashboard applications to control/read/manage your node data.

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