Wireless Broadband Alliance & LoRa Alliance
®
Proprietary
Copyright © 2020 Wireless Broadband Alliance & LoRa Alliance
Report Title: Wi-Fi & LoRaWAN
®
Trials
Issue Date: November 2020
Version: Final
20
SMART CITY
INTEROPERABILITY BETWEEN WI-FI &
LoRaWAN AT THE NETWORK LEVEL
Description
Two of the key technologies that are used today
for IoT use cases and applications are Wi-Fi &
LoRaWAN.
Nesten's intelligent network provides access
across both technologies. Skyhook location
services allow geo-locating IoT devices across
either technology using Wi-Fi scans.
Nesten and Skyhook partnered to demonstrate
and study interoperability between Wi-Fi &
LoRaWAN in this trial. The goal of this trial was
to improve the handover process by geo-locating
the IoT tags (using Wi-Fi scans) and determine if
they were within coverage of any LoRaWAN Gate-
way. Signal-strength handover criteria was also
explored.
Deployment
The Nesten's wireless nodes and tags can support
both LoRaWAN and Wi-Fi and handle the interop-
erability based on signal strength and packet error
metrics as well as Skyhook's geolocation databases.
Key Primary Indicators
KPIs that were tracked throughout this Proof of
Concept are:
• Interoperability/Roaming:
• Handover from LoRaWAN to Wi-Fi
• Handover from Wi-Fi to LoRaWAN
• Signal Strength metric for roaming
• Packet error metrics for predefined data
patterns when handover
• Wi-Fi coverage for roaming
• LoRaWAN coverage for roaming
• Data throttling when transitioning from
Wi-Fi to LoRaWAN and vice versa
• Coverage Metrics:
• Wi-Fi AP coverage
• LoRaWAN gateway coverage
These KPIs were used to monitor & evaluate Nest-
en network coverage. In addition, the KPIs were
used to optimize IoT devices bandwidth utilization
by allowing apps to send more traffic while devic-
es connect on Wi-Fi and less when connected on
LoRaWAN. Handover and coverage decisions are
based on low power Wi-Fi sniffing and Skyhook
crowd-sourced global databases of access points.
