LoRaWAN has long since cemented its place as a low-power, wide-area-networking (LPWAN) protocol for IoT connectivity. Since 2015, the LoRaWAN Alliance shepherded the LoRaWAN standard to maintain its dominant position in the world of secure, carrier-grade IoT LPWAN connectivity.
To remain both healthy and relevant, standards must evolve along with the markets they serve. That evolution must be a partnership between the organization that drives the standard and the organization’s member ecosystem. The IoT LPWAN world is no different, and market requirements are changing as the industry ramps toward true global connectivity with scalability and an end-to-end solution.
To point itself, and LoRaWAN, toward the future, the Alliance recently released its first technology roadmap (see figure). Whereas the early days of the organization’s lifespan were centered on building, and then interconnecting, LoRaWAN networks as a sort of proof of concept, the past few years have been dominated by efforts to increase ease of deployment.
Going forward, the Alliance’s focus will be on application scalability. LoRaWAN has had growing success in large-scale deployments in buildings, cities, factories, and farms. The protocol has been enriched with satellite connectivity as well as long-range, frequency-hopping spread-spectrum capabilities. Relay enhancements and mobile gateways for drive-by data collection were also added to the drive toward hyperscalable networking.
Utilities stand to gain from these enhancements as they transition to automated metering systems and infrastructures. Mobile gateways enable them to either walk or drive by to get those last 10 readings without need for a fixed gateway. A future related capability is network discovery.
Over-the-air firmware updates and relay certification helps to futureproof devices. Crypto-agility allows for updating of crypto sweeps for deployed devices. LoRaWAN will also implement automated onboarding through RFID and QR codes based on GS1 standards.
With the largest open IoT ecosystem, LoRaWAN adds further value through its flexibility borne of working with other standards. In some scenarios, a workable network solution involves coupling LoRaWAN with Wi-Fi or 5G connectivity. Such flexibility is necessary in completing the evolution toward massive, global IoT solutions.
