New LoRaWAN development kits support design engineers developing IoT applications

RS Components has added a new range of LoRaWAN development kits from Semtech to its large portfolio of tools that support engineers designing Internet of Things (IoT) applications. LoRaWAN wireless networking delivers a longer range than most common low power wireless technologies, in addition to its greater resilience to interference, and is ideal for applications including sensor circuits/networks, security systems, smart home, smart metering, industrial control and smart cities. The four new evaluation modules feature Semtech’s advanced long-range LoRa technology, making them ideal for LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) specifications for battery-operated IoT networks and applications, as well as enabling connection to LoRaWAN gateways. LoRa is also the primary protocol adopted by ‘The Things Network’, which oversaw the crowdsourcing of a complete citywide IoT data network in Amsterdam. It provides a common protocol allowing smart assets and IoT devices to communicate with one another. The specification is also optimised for very low power use, which makes it perfect for wireless battery-powered end-points in an IoT network. It can securely deliver two-way communication at data rates from 0.3kbps to 50kbps, and distances of up to 2km to 5km in an urban environment and up to 15km in a suburban environment. The LoRa modulation is a derivative of chirp-spread-spectrum (CSS) encoding technology, which uses the entire allocated bandwidth to broadcast a signal, spreading the signal across a broader band of spectrum. This means the system can be made to operate even over a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), providing LoRaWAN with high robustness to channel noise. The development kits all employ the on-board SX1272/6 RF transceivers, which offers wide area communication with extreme tolerance of interference, and PE4259 UltraCMOS RF antenna switches from Peregrine Semiconductor. Kit options include: 868MHz ISM band; 169/868MHz dual-band; 433/868MHz dual-band; and a 433/868MHz dual-band transceiver evaluation module that comes in the mbed Shield format.