How LoRa Technology is Transforming Businesses and Connecting the World

Semtech Corporation
3 min readJan 31, 2019

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By Vivek Mohan, Director of IoT for Semtech’s Wireless and Sensing Products Group

Every year CES provides a look at how technology is changing our lives. One of the central takeaways from CES 2019 was that everything is becoming connected. Smart devices on display ran the gamut from connected toothbrushes to autonomous cars and everything in between. The wide range of connected applications at the show reinforced the need for LoRa® devices and wireless radio frequency technology (LoRa Technology), a proven, flexible, scalable, and easy to implement solution for real-world problems in rural and indoor use cases where cellular and Wi-Fi/BLE based networks are ineffective.

LoRa Technology has already made an incredible impact around the world. In 2018, Semtech witnessed the deployment of 18 million LoRa-enabled end nodes, a 60 percent year-over-year increase. By early 2019, there will be more 80 million LoRa-enabled end nodes and 220,000 LoRa-based gateways deployed globally. Additionally, the LoRa Alliance™, the fastest growing Internet of Things (IoT) alliance for Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) applications, recently announced it reached a milestone of more than 100 LoRaWAN network operators. With the rising adoption of the LoRaWAN protocol, we look forward to seeing more exciting LoRa-based deployments in smart buildings, smart metering, smart agriculture, smart cities, supply chain, and beyond. Here’s a look at some of the partnerships and case studies we announced over the last year showing how LoRa Technology is making an impact.

Making Homes Intelligent

LoRa Technology’s low power qualities and ability to penetrate dense building materials make it an ideal platform for IoT-connected smart home and building devices. YoSmart, a high-tech enterprise specializing in smart home and life products, released a new series of LoRa-enabled products including thermostats, sprinkler controllers, door locks, leakage monitors, and smoke alarms. These devices connect to a building’s network and allow consistent, remote monitoring to better conserve energy and predict when maintenance is necessary, saving property managers money.

Eliminating Water Waste

The Apana water management solution provides businesses with detailed insights into their total water footprint by identifying process drift, mechanical malfunctions and failure points. Apana selected LoRa-based radio transceivers to create a LPWAN solution for connected water utility meters — the Apana LiNK network — for easy deployment and flexibility. Costco Wholesale was an early adopter of Apana and continues to be one of its largest customers. After testing in its Southern California locations, the company noticed an average of a 20 percent reduction in water use and also saw about a 22 percent savings in their water bills. Following the successful rollout in Southern California, Costco deployed Apana’s LoRa-based water management solution across the rest of its North American locations.

Building Smarter Cities

The City of Calgary is leveraging LoRa Technology to improve efficiencies and quality of life for all its residents and tourists. Learn about how Calgary’s Devonian Gardens uses LoRa Technology to maintain acres of plants indoors, how the Urban Alliance designed an innovative solution to monitor and characterize sound throughout the city and how Shaganappi Point Golf Course tracks pace of play to improve operational efficiencies.

Connecting Everything from the Ground Up

Alibaba Cloud introduced the industry’s first LoRa-based airship balloon, which connected sensors from 20 meters underground to 40,000 meters above ground demonstrating the extensive capabilities of LoRa Technology including long range, simple and flexible network deployment. Semtech and Alibaba Cloud’s joint effort secures and establishes the radio spectrum for the rapid growth of IoT solutions for multiple vertical markets and new use cases in China, including logistics tracking, air quality monitoring, food safety compliance, and smoke detecting safety.

After an action-packed 2018, we are well underway to establishing LoRa as the de facto platform for IoT solutions, and we look forward to continuing to drive the growth of LoRa Technology around the world.

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Semtech Corporation

Analog & Mixed-Signal Semiconductors | Creator of LoRa Technology