RS Components adds Semtech LoRaWAN development kits
LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) development kits from Semtech have been added to the RS Components range.
LoRaWAN wireless networking delivers a longer range than most low power wireless technologies, offers greater resilience to interference, and can be used with sensor circuits/networks, security systems, smart home, smart metering, industrial control and smart cities.
The four LoRaWAN evaluation modules feature the company’s long-range LoRa technology, for LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) specifications for battery-operated IoT networks and applications, as well as enabling connection to LoRaWAN gateways.
The protocol allows smart assets and IoT devices to communicate with one another. The LoRaWAN specification is optimised for very low power use, which makes it suitable for wireless battery-powered end-points in an IoT network. It can securely deliver two-way communication at data rates from 0.3 to 50kbit/s, and distances of up to two to 5km in an urban environment, and up to 15km in a suburban environment.
The company’s 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 spectrum. This means the system can be made to operate even over a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), providing high robustness to channel noise, says the company.
The development kits employ the on-board SX1272/6 RF transceivers for 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 is supplied with the mbed Shield format.
