With the rapid development of Internet of Things technology, NB-IoT, LoRa , SigFox and other technologies have appeared in our field of vision. Currently, many IoT applications on the market use LoRa technology, but some do not use the LoRaWAN network protocol, but use the LoRa private protocol. Users are also confused when choosing IoT devices based on these two protocols. So what is the difference between the LoRaWAN standard protocol and the LoRa private protocol? Let’s take a look at it together:
1. What is LoRa wireless transmission technology?
LoRa is the abbreviation of Long Range. It is one of the low-power wide-area Internet of Things (LPWAN) communication technologies. It is an ultra-long-distance wireless transmission solution based on spread spectrum technology adopted and promoted by the American Semtech company. This solution changes the previous tradeoff between transmission distance and power consumption, providing users with a simple system that can achieve long distance, long battery life, and large capacity, thereby expanding the sensor network. Currently, LoRa is mainly used in free frequency bands around the world. Operation, including EU433MHz/CN470MHz/EU868MHz/AU915MHz, etc.
2. LoRa technology and LoRaWAN technology
There is an essential difference between LoRa and LoRaWAN: the former belongs to the physical layer and the latter belongs to the MAC layer. LoRaWAN is used as a wireless network for WAN (Wide Area Network) due to its wide coverage capabilities. LoRa is the modulation technology used in the physical layer of the LoRaWAN network; basically CSS (Chirp spread Spectrum) modulation, used to provide different data rates using different spreading factors. LoRaWAN is popular in IoT/M2M-based systems for low power consumption, low data rates, and long-distance wireless transmission. LoRa is used as robust modulation in LoRaWAN system, helping to achieve different data transmission rates.
3. LoRa protocol and LoRaWAN protocol
Users often ask what is the difference between LoRa and LoRaWan? In fact, we only distinguish between “LoRa protocol” and “LoRaWAN protocol”. We can regard the LoRa protocol as a subset of the LoRaWAN protocol, because in the computer network OSI model, the LoRa protocol is located in the bottom physical layer. It is a physical layer transmission protocol; LoRaWAN is a set of protocol standards based on LoRa transmission technology and is mainly based on the MAC layer. With this standard, LoRaWAN becomes a network technology. Products corresponding to this set of technologies include LoRaWAN nodes, LoRaWAN gateways and LoRaWAN protocol and data cloud platforms.
Summarize
In general, LoRa only contains the link layer protocol and is very suitable for P2P communication between nodes; LoRaWAN also contains the network layer, so information can be sent to any base station connected to the cloud platform.
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