Whitepapers

LoRa Alliance ® and LoRaWAN ® are registered trademarks. Used with permission. ©2020 LoRa Alliance ® www.lora-alliance.org WHY LoRaWAN ® IS THE LOGICAL CHOICE FOR ASSET-TRACKING CONNECTIVITY THE ASSET-TRACKING SOLUTIONS LANDSCAPE AND FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS A ty pical asset tracking solu tion aims to trace and track the asset in mov ement oth indoor and ou tdoor. here are ou r ndamental elements of an asset-tracking solu tion: . the tracker, which is a position sensor 2. the connectiv ity that sends the location data to the management center . the platf orm or dev ice management . the application sof tware, su ch as enterprise resou rce planning RP warehou se management sy stem and many others. here is a reasonab ly large marketplace of companies of ering asset-tracking solu tions, and these companies are also ev olv ing to ace the challenges of asset tracking in the digital era. here is the challenge of tru st that mu st ex tend along the chain of play ers that take an asset rom origin to destination. nsu ring that tru st at ev ery step complicates the entire process. o solv e this prob lem, there are sev eral activ ities arou nd the conv ergence of oT lockchain and other orms of distrib ted ledger technology . he ood ru st initiativ e Walmart and others is an ex ample of this ty pe of ef ort. here are then connectiv ity issu es. An asset-tracking solu tion needs to nction smoothly across cou ntries and continents withou t roaming prob lems and incu rring additional connectiv ity costs. Asset tracking needs glob al connectiv ity . inally asset tracking needs indoor cov erage to enab le and driv e dev elopment of the connected warehou se, where pallets, indiv idu al items and operational eq ipment can e tagged— perhaps with low-cost sensors— to optimiz e resource utilization, increase efficiency and enable predictiv e maintenance. he idea of priv ate networks with long-b attery lif e sensors and dev ices can e the ilding lock of connected warehou ses. WHY LoRaWAN FITS THE NEEDS OF LOGISTICS ORGANIZATIONS rom the hu ge olu me of tonne-kilometers transported glob ally it' s clear that asset tracking, particu larly of shipping containers, is an enormou s market, and this is only added to smaller assets, parcels, eq ipment and ehicles that need to e tracked throu ghou t the logistics indu stry . A nif ing actor is that mu ch of the assets to e tracked cross orders, ev en mov ing rom continent to continent, and theref ore glob ally applicab le solu tions to asset connectiv ity are needed to enab le tracking. similar importance is that this is not a high andwidth indu stry . he asset only needs to commu nicate its location in order to e tracked and, ev en adv anced applications su ch as cold chain transport only need to transmit small amou nts of data ab ou t the temperatu re of the produ ct eing shipped. heref ore, relativ ely low andwidth is ideal and low latency is not req ired. n addition, when stacked against the cost of higher andwidth satellite or cellu lar connections, it' s clear that LP WANs su ch as LoRaWAN hav e mu ch to of er and can easily handle the sheer scale of asset-tracking market demands. LoRaWAN specifically is an excellent fit, because it brings together competitiv e cost with the capab ility of handling ex tremely high dev ice density at a giv en site. ou think of a logistics acility with the tens of thou sands of containers, assets and parcels that trav erse it ev ery day this capab ility is essential. Also essential is the ab ility to hav e deep indoor

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