- Extending Access to Meters, Sensors for Smart Buildings
- Battery-Powered for Low-Cost Signal Boosts
- New Solutions and Hardware Under Development
The LoRa Alliance has released a new specification for relay device functionality that would enable long-range wide-area network (LoRaWAN) open-standard deployments to extend into areas in which transmission has previously been difficult. These remote areas can include enclosed or underground spaces, or those in which obstacles stand between an end node (sensor) and a gateway.
Alper Yegin
The LoRa Alliance’s Relay Workgroup has been developing the new standard throughout the past year and a half, according to Alper Yegin, the Alliance Board vice-chair and Technical Committee chair, as well as the VP of advanced technology development at Internet of Things (IoT) technology company Actility. The workgroup has nearly 100 members, of which several dozen, including Actility, have been actively involved in standard development.
With the new spec release, the Alliance expects to see extended deployments in utility metering, smart buildings, agriculture and other applications. The relays will be part of both existing and new IoT solutions, says Derek Wallace, the LoRa Alliance’s VP of marketing. LoRaWAN is a low-power, wireless network protocol with specifications defined by the LoRa Alliance. It commonly transmits data at a range of several kilometers in urban areas and up to 40 kilometers (25 miles) in open rural areas.
Service providers and other businesses have been deploying LoRaWAN gateways around the globe, and many urban areas have full coverage that others can access when they build or deploy their own IoT systems. Benefits include low-power, long-range and relatively low-cost deployments, while it is designed to transmit small packets of data.
Extending Access to Meters, Sensors for Smart Buildings
In some cases, LoRaWAN transmissions are being accomplished by low-Earth orbit satellites, at a range of 500 to 600 kilometers (311 to 373 miles), and even geo-satellites at very long range—30,000 kilometers (18,640 miles) above the ground. In the case of terrestrial transmissions, the signal can penetrate buildings, though it has limitations when it comes to thick walls, metal or very long-range requirements.
Derek Wallace
In some cases, a LoRaWAN deployment may require access to what is just a few end nodes at the edge of a network, which cannot be easily accessed via existing gateways. Adding more hardware to reach a small number of end points in a challenging area would be too costly for most companies deploying LoRaWAN systems. Therefore, Yegin says, a relay extension would offer greater access flexibility at a very low cost, while also being relatively easy to implement.
In the past, some companies have extended the range of LoRa technologies into more challenging environments indoors or around metal, by building their own proprietary relays that forward transmissions from end points in these tight or hard-to-reach areas. However, proprietary systems have limits. They cannot operate with hardware from other vendors, for instance. On the other hand, the relay specification now being released enables the development of open-standard relays, using battery power, which can manage two-way transmission with at least 10 LoRaWAN end devices and a standard LoRaWAN gateway.
The relay extension could be added onto an existing deployment, Wallace says, while end devices that transmit to a relay are also capable of reverting back to traditional LoRaWAN configurations, such as transmitting directly to a gateway if relays are removed. “What this does,” he explains, “is it gives a lot of flexibility for extended use cases by extending coverage areas.”
Battery-Powered for Low-Cost Signal Boosts
Relays using the new specification can be deployed in the field without the need for any wires. They use battery power and can backhaul data from a sensor via LoRaWAN to the gateways, and ultimately back to the server. That means they do not require any other connections via cellular 3G networks, Yegin says—for example, Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Instead, he adds, the relay node relies only on the presence of the LoRaWAN connectivity to extend the existing coverage. Battery life depends on the rate at which data is forwarded, such as once per hour or four times per day. The data payload size also affects the amount of battery power consumption.
According to the LoRa Alliance, the relay is designed for security, with an encryption key transferred to the relay. Several vertical markets may offer the earliest applications for development of relay-boosted deployments, including smart buildings and utility metering. In those scenarios, meters in homes and businesses, or at other sites, can be monitored even if they are spread through a wide area, or if they are installed in basements or behind a thick brick wall.
Placing the battery-powered relay within range of the meters would be relatively low-cost, and the battery in a typical deployment would not require replacement for years, possibly around a decade. “With the relay specification, therefore, we’re extending both the LoRaWAN coverage and the price point,” Yegin states.
New Solutions and Hardware Under Development
Beyond the extension of utility metering and smart building deployments, there are other early applications as well that the LoRa Alliance expects technology with the new relay specification to address. One application could be the deployment of relays for use in the shipping industry. Large metallic containers make wireless transmission challenging, for example. With a LoRaWAN relay, however, sensors could be accessed even if they were inside a container.
Each sensor would transmit data to a relay attached to the exterior of a metal container. Data from temperature, light, or door-open/close sensors could be sent to the relay, which in turn would forward that information to a gateway on the ship. In that way, shippers or other interested parties could receive data regarding the conditions inside the container, even when it was loaded onto the vessel.
Another use case involves using relays to access data from remote locations, such as rural homes or buildings, with the help of satellites. Some companies already provide LoRaWAN base stations on satellites, but they require line of sight to capture sensor data, which could be inside a cabin or other structure. With a relay, the data could be captured by a relay device mounted outdoors, and then be forwarded to the satellite.
“So it’s like really stretching the signals beyond the physical limits,” Yegin says. He predicts a wide variety of applications to be innovated, now that the technology can reach these more remote end devices or sensors. “These are again limited by our imagination and the market needs at the moment.”
Key Takeaways:
- Until now, only proprietary devices have been providing LoRaWAN accessibility in the most remote or challenging locations, which placed limits on some IoT deployments.
- The new relay specification will enable companies to simply add in open-specification-compliant devices to extend their coverage area or build new networks that reach sensors in challenging locations.