6 ms·

Crazy LORA ranges today

106 points by wienke 7y ago

jszymborski 7y ago
Archive link: https://archive.is/e7oGG https://archive.is/e7oGG
chuckledog 7y ago
Some context: LoRa is a new, private and spread-spectrum modulation technique which allows sending data at extremely low data-rates to extremely long ranges. The low data-rate (down to few bytes per second) and LoRa modulation lead to very low receiver sensitivity (down to -134 dBm), which combined to an output power of +14 dBm means extremely large link budgets: up to 148 dB., what means more than 22km (13.6 miles) in LOS links and up to 2km (1.2miles) in NLOS links in urban environment (going through buildings). From https://www.cooking-hacks.com/documentation/tutorials/extreme-range-lora-sx1272-module-shield-arduino-raspberry-pi-intel-galileo https://www.cooking-hacks.com/documentation/tutorials/extrem...
- chuckledog 7y ago
  OP observed up to 20x that range https://www.distancefromto.net/distance-from-sheffield-gb-to-amsterdam-nl https://www.distancefromto.net/distance-from-sheffield-gb-to...
  - superkuh 7y ago
    And all of these range examples are completely irrelevant to the distances you'll achieve using lora in practice. But while we're on the subject there's been lora from/to geosynchronous orbit. So I think that's the distance record: https://hackaday.com/2018/02/22/at-71572-km-you-wont-beat-this-lora-record/ https://hackaday.com/2018/02/22/at-71572-km-you-wont-beat-th... At VHF and up the only thing that really matters is line of sight. Everything else modulation wise is just frosting. Unless you're in a plane/balloon/etc or paying for power and location on a very tall building Lora isn't going to go any further than your 2.4 GHz wifi router. These contrived setups for distant records (and using transient tropo ducting) are just for fun.
    - Moggie100 7y ago
      While I agree the sentiment that the silly range ones are just for fun, I have in practice seen good links over ranges with no line of sight. I've personally observed links through many buildings, over hills, and so forth that easily dwarf the range of the average 2.4Ghz link.
      - ausjke 7y ago
        950Mhz/860Mhz is fine, 315/433Mhz is even better for longer distance but it seems Europe/USA are mostly 950/860Mhz only.
    - orbital-decay 7y ago
      I see your 71572km and raise you a 3.5W radio signal received on Earth from the distance of 1.2 billion km: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2005/20050207-they-were-the-first-and-the-last-to-hear-from-huygens.html http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2005/2005020...
      - sathackr 7y ago
        Impressive, but the linked article didn't uses a high gain antenna array like was used to communicate with deep space probes. They specifically wanted something with a low barrier to entry. Take a look at the antenna they used. Pretty impressive imo.
        orbital-decay 7y ago
        If I read that right, they used a GEO satellite as a relay, which is nothing like a low-power device, and GP's point was the asymmetrical distance record. Similarly, Hyugens experiment used a simple patch antenna at Titan (that's why it's notable), and a high-gain antenna on Earth.
        sathackr 7y ago
        Guess I should have read further in.
- lscotte 7y ago
  To me, this is not extremely long range, in comparison to a Pactor modem over HF, which can reach over 1000 miles, as I've seen on a sailboat passage from Hawaii to California. It requires more power - 150 watts or so, if I recall correctly, and bit rates can be low as a few bits (not bytes) per second with poor propagation. Being able to stay in contact with family in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is pretty awesome.
  - ivanhoe 7y ago
    It's extremely long range for low-power devices. LORA is mostly used for sensors, trackers and other miniature, usually battery/solar powered devices that need to run for months or sometimes years unmaintained.
    - tlrobinson 7y ago
      Also, very small antennas, especially compared to typical HF antennas (sometimes the entire 60+ ft backstay on a sailboat, for example)
    - windexh8er 7y ago
      For those interested in playing around PyCom (MicroPython devices) are great. As an example the LoPy 4 supports LoRa, Sigfox, Bluetooth and Wifi. https://pycom.io/product/lopy4/ https://pycom.io/product/lopy4/
      - therein 7y ago
        I got one of those but only having one. I can think of some uses for it if I had two but with only one, couldn't do much with it.
        windexh8er 7y ago
        Keep in mind that's not exactly true. There are gateways that can be used such as "The Things Network": https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/ https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/
souterrain 7y ago
I’ve done Long Island to Virginia with 3W on a portable at 146 MHz, but the range being seen on 800-900 MHz around Netherlands is quite amazing. I would agree it must be tropospheric ducting; I’m not aware of any other propagation mode that could be at work here.
- mmaunder 7y ago
  Agreed. Tropo ducting is the only propagation that seems feasible for microwave. Fun!
- themodelplumber 7y ago
  That's impressive. It must have felt pretty amazing! There was a guy in one of the FM DXing groups on Facebook recently who posted a video of a French-language Canadian FM broadcast station he picked up from the Florida panhandle.
Moggie100 7y ago
503'ing here for me, so here's an cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://rent-a-pilot.nl/archives/190 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://... Also, I've been part of the group looking at LoRa at Lancaster University for some time, and am currently working on part of a commercial deployment too. Here are a few papers published on the topic by Dr. Martin Bor, and occasionally myself (all the top ones are LoRa): https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=WhN1gGwAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=WhN1gGwAAAAJ&hl=...
- fusl 7y ago
  Internet Archive link: https://web.archive.org/http://rent-a-pilot.nl/archives/190 https://web.archive.org/http://rent-a-pilot.nl/archives/190
mhandley 7y ago
LoRa has become the tool of choice for the high altitude balloon community. At least in the UK, you're restricted to 10mW in the 434MHz band when airborne. People have been pretty successful at getting (very) slow-scan video from balloons at 30km altitude.
- ausjke 7y ago
  never thought LoRa can transmit video, isn't the bandwidth too low for that, I can not even imagine 320x240 video/mjpg using LoRA.
  - tlrobinson 7y ago
    “Slow scan” TV is... slow. > It is a much slower method of still picture transmission, usually taking from about eight seconds to a couple of minutes, depending on the mode used, to transmit one image frame. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-scan_television https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-scan_television
- Maxious 7y ago
  https://github.com/projecthorus/wenet https://github.com/projecthorus/wenet is an example of using a RFM98W lora module with a raspberry pi/RTLSDR reciever (albeit at 115kbaud in FSK mode, but 50mW of tx power gets ranges of over 100km)
  - squarefoot 7y ago
    That is freaking interesting, 115kbps may seem low compared to usual broadband connections, but it's a lot in the embedded world. Also it would be more than enough to get very high quality voice communications. Codec2 which already does wonders with a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of that rate comes to mind. How long before someone puts LoRa encrypted walkie talkies on the market?
kosma 7y ago
I'm soldering a a LoRA-based board right now. During design process we calculated the power budget and found out the power consumption is so absurdly low the main factor is battery shelf life. We live in the future.
JabavuAdams 7y ago
That article should probably start with a couple of sentences answering "What is LORA?"
d21d3q 7y ago
Is it me or maybe you also have doubds about LoRaWAN use cases? (LoRa is physical layer, way of encoding bits with rf, but you need protocol. LoRaWAN is open standard, which is being implemented and used by TTN community) So for me main drawback of LoRaWAN is limited number of ACKed packets (gateway which can talk to thousands devices can use only 1% of airtime (simplified) and you have to divide it by number of users https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/lorawan/duty-cycle.html https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/lorawan/duty-cycle.htm...), so you are allowed to have 10 packets per day. Any other data can be send in way called " send and pray"... Would you build industrial device for telemetry while you can not be sure about your data? For example energy monitoring with 15 min periods. You can't be sure that your data arrives. So ranges presented here is matter of luck but not reliable link. Maybe ISM band limitations should adopt to LoRa which is more resistant to errors. Or protocol should be changed (symphonylink has protocol for unlimited ACKed frames, OTA etc) Just my 2 cents.

106 points by wienke 7y ago

Archive link: https://archive.is/e7oGG https://archive.is/e7oGG

Some context: LoRa is a new, private and spread-spectrum modulation technique which allows sending data at extremely low data-rates to extremely long ranges. The low data-rate (down to few bytes per second) and LoRa modulation lead to very low receiver sensitivity (down to -134 dBm), which combined to an output power of +14 dBm means extremely large link budgets: up to 148 dB., what means more than 22km (13.6 miles) in LOS links and up to 2km (1.2miles) in NLOS links in urban environment (going through buildings). From https://www.cooking-hacks.com/documentation/tutorials/extreme-range-lora-sx1272-module-shield-arduino-raspberry-pi-intel-galileo https://www.cooking-hacks.com/documentation/tutorials/extrem...

chuckledog 7y ago
OP observed up to 20x that range https://www.distancefromto.net/distance-from-sheffield-gb-to-amsterdam-nl https://www.distancefromto.net/distance-from-sheffield-gb-to...
- superkuh 7y ago
  And all of these range examples are completely irrelevant to the distances you'll achieve using lora in practice. But while we're on the subject there's been lora from/to geosynchronous orbit. So I think that's the distance record: https://hackaday.com/2018/02/22/at-71572-km-you-wont-beat-this-lora-record/ https://hackaday.com/2018/02/22/at-71572-km-you-wont-beat-th... At VHF and up the only thing that really matters is line of sight. Everything else modulation wise is just frosting. Unless you're in a plane/balloon/etc or paying for power and location on a very tall building Lora isn't going to go any further than your 2.4 GHz wifi router. These contrived setups for distant records (and using transient tropo ducting) are just for fun.
  - Moggie100 7y ago
    While I agree the sentiment that the silly range ones are just for fun, I have in practice seen good links over ranges with no line of sight. I've personally observed links through many buildings, over hills, and so forth that easily dwarf the range of the average 2.4Ghz link.
    - ausjke 7y ago
      950Mhz/860Mhz is fine, 315/433Mhz is even better for longer distance but it seems Europe/USA are mostly 950/860Mhz only.
  - orbital-decay 7y ago
    I see your 71572km and raise you a 3.5W radio signal received on Earth from the distance of 1.2 billion km: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2005/20050207-they-were-the-first-and-the-last-to-hear-from-huygens.html http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2005/2005020...
    - sathackr 7y ago
      Impressive, but the linked article didn't uses a high gain antenna array like was used to communicate with deep space probes. They specifically wanted something with a low barrier to entry. Take a look at the antenna they used. Pretty impressive imo.
      - orbital-decay 7y ago
        If I read that right, they used a GEO satellite as a relay, which is nothing like a low-power device, and GP's point was the asymmetrical distance record. Similarly, Hyugens experiment used a simple patch antenna at Titan (that's why it's notable), and a high-gain antenna on Earth.
        sathackr 7y ago
        Guess I should have read further in.
lscotte 7y ago
To me, this is not extremely long range, in comparison to a Pactor modem over HF, which can reach over 1000 miles, as I've seen on a sailboat passage from Hawaii to California. It requires more power - 150 watts or so, if I recall correctly, and bit rates can be low as a few bits (not bytes) per second with poor propagation. Being able to stay in contact with family in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is pretty awesome.
- ivanhoe 7y ago
  It's extremely long range for low-power devices. LORA is mostly used for sensors, trackers and other miniature, usually battery/solar powered devices that need to run for months or sometimes years unmaintained.
  - tlrobinson 7y ago
    Also, very small antennas, especially compared to typical HF antennas (sometimes the entire 60+ ft backstay on a sailboat, for example)
  - windexh8er 7y ago
    For those interested in playing around PyCom (MicroPython devices) are great. As an example the LoPy 4 supports LoRa, Sigfox, Bluetooth and Wifi. https://pycom.io/product/lopy4/ https://pycom.io/product/lopy4/
    - therein 7y ago
      I got one of those but only having one. I can think of some uses for it if I had two but with only one, couldn't do much with it.
      - windexh8er 7y ago
        Keep in mind that's not exactly true. There are gateways that can be used such as "The Things Network": https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/ https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/

souterrain 7y ago

I’ve done Long Island to Virginia with 3W on a portable at 146 MHz, but the range being seen on 800-900 MHz around Netherlands is quite amazing. I would agree it must be tropospheric ducting; I’m not aware of any other propagation mode that could be at work here.

mmaunder 7y ago
Agreed. Tropo ducting is the only propagation that seems feasible for microwave. Fun!
themodelplumber 7y ago
That's impressive. It must have felt pretty amazing! There was a guy in one of the FM DXing groups on Facebook recently who posted a video of a French-language Canadian FM broadcast station he picked up from the Florida panhandle.

Moggie100 7y ago

503'ing here for me, so here's an cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://rent-a-pilot.nl/archives/190 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://... Also, I've been part of the group looking at LoRa at Lancaster University for some time, and am currently working on part of a commercial deployment too. Here are a few papers published on the topic by Dr. Martin Bor, and occasionally myself (all the top ones are LoRa): https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=WhN1gGwAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=WhN1gGwAAAAJ&hl=...

fusl 7y ago
Internet Archive link: https://web.archive.org/http://rent-a-pilot.nl/archives/190 https://web.archive.org/http://rent-a-pilot.nl/archives/190

mhandley 7y ago

LoRa has become the tool of choice for the high altitude balloon community. At least in the UK, you're restricted to 10mW in the 434MHz band when airborne. People have been pretty successful at getting (very) slow-scan video from balloons at 30km altitude.

ausjke 7y ago
never thought LoRa can transmit video, isn't the bandwidth too low for that, I can not even imagine 320x240 video/mjpg using LoRA.
- tlrobinson 7y ago
  “Slow scan” TV is... slow. > It is a much slower method of still picture transmission, usually taking from about eight seconds to a couple of minutes, depending on the mode used, to transmit one image frame. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-scan_television https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-scan_television
Maxious 7y ago
https://github.com/projecthorus/wenet https://github.com/projecthorus/wenet is an example of using a RFM98W lora module with a raspberry pi/RTLSDR reciever (albeit at 115kbaud in FSK mode, but 50mW of tx power gets ranges of over 100km)
- squarefoot 7y ago
  That is freaking interesting, 115kbps may seem low compared to usual broadband connections, but it's a lot in the embedded world. Also it would be more than enough to get very high quality voice communications. Codec2 which already does wonders with a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of that rate comes to mind. How long before someone puts LoRa encrypted walkie talkies on the market?

kosma 7y ago

I'm soldering a a LoRA-based board right now. During design process we calculated the power budget and found out the power consumption is so absurdly low the main factor is battery shelf life. We live in the future.

JabavuAdams 7y ago

That article should probably start with a couple of sentences answering "What is LORA?"

d21d3q 7y ago

Is it me or maybe you also have doubds about LoRaWAN use cases? (LoRa is physical layer, way of encoding bits with rf, but you need protocol. LoRaWAN is open standard, which is being implemented and used by TTN community) So for me main drawback of LoRaWAN is limited number of ACKed packets (gateway which can talk to thousands devices can use only 1% of airtime (simplified) and you have to divide it by number of users https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/lorawan/duty-cycle.html https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/lorawan/duty-cycle.htm...), so you are allowed to have 10 packets per day. Any other data can be send in way called " send and pray"... Would you build industrial device for telemetry while you can not be sure about your data? For example energy monitoring with 15 min periods. You can't be sure that your data arrives. So ranges presented here is matter of luck but not reliable link. Maybe ISM band limitations should adopt to LoRa which is more resistant to errors. Or protocol should be changed (symphonylink has protocol for unlimited ACKed frames, OTA etc) Just my 2 cents.