LoRaWAN is the LoRa Alliance’s low-power wide-area networking protocol for battery-powered devices communicating over long distances at low bit rates. It defines the media access and network architecture above the LoRa physical layer, and is the dominant open LPWAN standard for sensor deployments in agriculture, utilities, logistics and smart cities.
LoRaWAN
LoRaWAN is the LoRa Alliance’s low-power wide-area networking protocol for battery-powered devices communicating over long distances at low bit rates. It defines the media access control and network architecture sitting above the LoRa physical layer, and it is the dominant open LPWAN standard for sensor deployments in agriculture, utilities, logistics and smart cities.
- MAC layer, not radio - LoRa is the proprietary modulation; LoRaWAN is the open networking standard on top of it.
- Star-of-stars topology - Devices talk to gateways, gateways backhaul to a network server, and the network server is where the addressable interface lives.
- Device classes A, B and C - A trade between battery life and downlink latency, chosen per device rather than per network.
- Years on a battery - The design constraint that shapes everything else about the protocol.
For anyone approaching LoRaWAN from the API side, the important thing is where the boundary sits: a developer never touches the protocol. The network server exposes the HTTP and MQTT interface, and that interface is a product decision by whoever operates it, not something LoRaWAN specifies. This is the general shape of IoT connectivity standards, and the reason oneM2M exists.
Industry: IoT
