Wireless RF

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.

Smart home automation makes it possible to proactively heat your home from the road, automatically close your garage each evening and conserve energy, among many other modern conveniences. 

With leading long range and low power, LoRaWAN networks are being utilized today in hundreds of innovative applications for smart cities, homes and buildings, agriculture, metering, supply chain and logistics, and more. The LoRa Alliance® is committed to enabling the large-scale deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) applications operating on the LoRaWAN® protocol. Members benefit from a vibrant ecosystem of active contributors offering solutions, products and services to create new and sustainable business opportunities worldwide.

The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) has officially created a new working group under its Technical Committee TC294 to specify a new adaptation layer for M-Bus protocol used mainly in smart water meters, smart gas meters and smart heat meters. This new working group, called CEN TC294 WG7, is led by expert from Birdz, a subsidiary of Nova Veolia, a successful leader in the European smart metering ecosystem, and member of the LoRa Alliance®. In 2019, Semtech hosted a webinar with Birdz to highlight its proven use cases for transforming municipal water distribution networks leveraging the LoRaWAN® protocol for greater efficiency and cost savings.

Enterprises are typically challenged with sensor solutions that monitor assets and facilities. Solutions today are not pre-integrated with the underlying network, causing long deployment cycles and difficulty to scale. They can have multiple dashboards and interfaces, requiring more time and resources to identify problems and business-impacting trends.

Asset tracking is one of the most widely deployed applications for the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT’s economic impact on factories, retail settings, work sites, offices, and homes could total as much as $6.3 trillion by 2025, according to McKinsey Global. A variety of industries, including home and building, healthcare, agriculture, and food services in addition to the industrial and logistics markets, are investing in smarter technologies to replace siloed legacy systems with automated asset management solutions. Many existing geolocation applications are power hungry and require multiple devices, software and services from multiple vendors, resulting in increased complexity and cost.

In August, 2020, Semtech, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and TensorIoT announced its collaboration on two Internet of Things (IoT) kits for LoRaWAN® networks: (1) Smart Building (2) Asset Tracking. The kits accelerate the development of smarter, more efficient solutions for Enterprises and Systems Integrators by making use of LoRaWAN connectivity with the integration of AWS’s leading IoT services. The kits accelerate the development of simple, effective IoT applications for Smart Building and Asset Tracking use cases through the use of the LoRaWAN® protocol and AWS IoT Cloud services based on a flexible serverless architecture.

As Internet of Things (IoT) customers discover the benefits of LoRa® devices for applications as diverse as water metering, smart lighting or tracking rhinos, there is increasing demand for “location of things” services. Location is a vital component of the IoT that encompasses the ability of things to sense and communicate their geographic position. Location data helps organize, track and account for the billions of Internet-connected devices based on sensors and other location-centric elements in them. The ability to capture location data forms the basis of location-based services, and starts with the physical radio frequency (RF) technologies that interact with the world around them. Several technologies, such as GPS, LoRa and others, are able to provide outdoor location information. However, for precise indoor location where GPS has no tangible reach, and to enable continuous location detection or tracking, indoor positioning systems (IPS) technologies such as Wi-Fi come into play.

Internet of Things (IoT) applications for LoRaWAN® networks have been deployed on every populated continent and even currently orbit the Earth via satellite. More than 158 million end-devices featuring LoRa® have been deployed, with use cases ranging from tracking cattle on connected ranches to monitoring energy use in the home. In January 2020, Semtech shared examples of how LoRa devices and LoRaWAN networks provide a unique combination of flexibility and scalability, connecting applications to better care for, conserve and connect our world in our LoRa Everywhere campaign. Read the LoRa Everywhere blog to learn more about those choice applications creating a smarter planet today.