DAS and LoRaWAN

redwirelessus
Thu, 30 Aug 2018 23:59:19 +0000

Actually, this is not true. 1) Range is one thing, but penetration is another. Even with such low sensitivity such as -130 to -140 dBm, negative SNR and huge range, you can’t guarantee always LoRaWAN penetration, say on tunnels, basements (yes, even on a stadium), low e-glass covered hotels, etc. In my experience, even high rise buildings in Chicago low e-glass coating can attenuate 40-60 dB! Today Semtech and 2 LoRaWAN operators (Senet in the US and Tecklect in Canada) were talking on a webinar panel and clearly all agreed that although LoRa’s range and SNR are extremely robust, it will not cover everywhere all the time - especially indoors. 2) I’m not referring to WiFi, as WiFi is not, by its 802.11 nature, a distributed medium (Access Points are autonomous and, thus, can’t be distributed with a DAS). I’m talking about Cellular DAS - the same one used on, for example, in a stadium to extend cellular signal. 3) I already tested a 1 w Cisco LoRa gateway indoors and it only covered half of a ~366 sq m building in the downlink and less than that in the uplink because, of course, the sensors had less power. 4) The question is not whether LoRaWAN is capable (or not) to cover ‘a whole area’ from the outside but whether anyone has experience, instead of adding additional gateways to an in building system like my Cisco example, connecting a Gateway to a DAS system. Hope this clears out the confusion