Wireless RF

With governments increasingly recognizing the need to control energy consumption and reduce waste, the requirement to make utilities smart is not only desirable, but also the law in many countries. Although the needs of electricity, gas and water utilities are different and highly specific, each utility type requires similar foundational technologies in terms of smart devices, connectivity and data processing.

There are plenty of reasons to deploy an Internet of Things (IoT) network in a rural area. But connecting dozens or hundreds of sensors to a network can also be a nightmare. Wind turbines or oil wells benefit from sensors measuring their respective environments and performance, but their operators should count themselves lucky if such energy harvesting facilities happen to be in range of robust cellular networks so they can stay connected to the Internet. The same is true of cargo containers crossing an ocean on a ship; they could be easily tracked with individual identifying devices, but at sea, they need satellites to transmit and receive signals at all.

Bouygues Construction Matériel, a subsidiary of one of the biggest global construction groups, Bouygues Construction, is implementing an innovative asset tracking solution for smart construction. The solution, offered by Omniscient, is connecting 20,000 pieces of equipment for remote real-time management and optimization, using a LoRaWAN® network from Bouygues Telecom, the expertise of Objenious and intelligent sensors from Abeeway, a subsidiary of Actility, a global provider of Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity.

As the Internet of Things (IoT) is embraced across industry verticals with a growing number of connected devices, the connectivity technology landscape remains complex and fragmented. There is no single IoT network that has ubiquitous coverage and is capable of addressing all vertical IoT use cases.

This is the fourth blog in an ongoing series about the LoRaWAN^® protocol, and its capabilities to transform next-generation networking applications built on 5G. This blog series follows Semtech’s “5G Fact vs. Fiction, and How LoRaWAN Plays a Role” webinar, featuring Charter Communications, MultiTech and Orange, and moderated by Beecham Research. It will address some of the pressing topics offered by the audience during the webinar’s Q&A. Read the introduction to the new series in part one, explore large scale LoRaWAN networks in part two – featuring MultiTech, and insights from Orange in part three. 

The Internet of Things (IoT) and Semtech’s LoRa® devices have emerged as the building blocks enabling safe and secure workplace solutions – allowing companies to adopt and maintain practical facility re-entry systems.

In just six years, Semtech’s LoRa Core™ portfolio has driven global economic and environmental change. This innovative technology has facilitated new opportunities for innovation – enabling businesses and citizens to make the world a better place.

It is anticipated that during the course of 2021, in most countries, there will be either lightening or lifting of the current COVID-19 lock-downs, impacting many businesses in respect to staff returning to workplaces facilities. This will require companies to improve facility hygiene and implement safeguards to protect employees from a virus outbreak. Many enterprises – in particular factories, distribution centers and logistics warehouses where people work very closely to each other – will also have to revisit standard operating procedures.

Building upon Semtech’s previous collaboration with Amazon on its network, Amazon Sidewalk, Semtech has today announced a collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enable LoRaWAN® network connectivity on AWS IoT Core, its managed Cloud service that lets connected devices easily and securely interact with Cloud applications and other devices.

The LoRaWAN open specification is a widely adopted low power, wide area networking (LPWAN) protocol based on Semtech’s LoRa® chipsets, leveraging the unlicensed radio spectrum in the Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band. The LoRa Alliance®, a non-profit association, drives the standardization and global harmonization of the LoRaWAN protocol.

At Semtech we are focused on enabling developers to rapidly innovate by delivering products and tools that make it easy for Cloud-first, mobile and embedded developers to develop Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN delivers a deep integration of devices featuring the LoRaWAN protocol with AWS IoT Core to provide developers with a “plug & play” way to combine the strengths of the LoRaWAN protocol with the deep capabilities of AWS IoT services.

Once gateways are provisioned and connected, this built-in integration automatically and securely routes device data to AWS IoT Core Rules Engine and AWS IoT Analytics, accelerating developers’ ability to build rich, data-driven IoT applications.

The LoRa Alliance®, an open, non-profit global association that develops, maintains and promotes the LoRaWAN® protocol for low power wide area networks (LPWANs), has expanded its guidelines to include Long Range - Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (LR-FHSS) data rates. The LR-FHSS rates significantly increases network capacity and robustness to interference – opening the door to new deployment opportunities across the globe.