LoRaWAN stands for Long-Range Wide-Area Network. LoRaWAN is very suitable for battery-powered mobile devices with the aim of providing an efficient way for bi-directional communication. LoRaWAN is divided into different parts, it consists of a LoRa sensor, a LoRaWAN gateway and a LoRaWAN network server.
With LoRaWAN it is possible to send information in two directions. Information sent from the LoRa sensor is called an uplink message. Information from the network to the sensor is called a downlink message.
LoRaWAN how does it work?
LoRaWAN focuses on low power consumption while allowing information to be transmitted over long distances. The low energy consumption is achieved by accurately specifying when information can be exchanged. This makes it possible for a LoRa sensor to wake up only to send a message while the sensor is in an energy-efficient sleep mode the rest of the time. To save even more energy, the network is able to adjust settings of the sensor, the term for this is Adaptive Data Rate (ADR). This gives the network the ability to tune the sensor so that it does not transmit longer than is necessary for reliable communication.