Whitepapers

LoRa Alliance ® and LoRaWAN ® are registered trademarks. Used with permission. ©2020 LoRa Alliance ® www.lora-alliance.org WHY LoRaWAN ® IS THE CONNECTIVITY PLATFORM FOR SMART CITY APPLICATIONS and inv olv e integration of third parties into the smart city inf rastru ctu re secu rely . n addition, many of these are pu lic projects that fall under financial and regulatory scrutiny, so the ocu s is not only on achiev ing commercial goals t on delivering societal benefits for citizens. HOW LoRaWAN ® CAN BE AN ENABLER OF SMART CITIES mart cities depend on connectiv ity that is iq itou sly av ailab le indoors and ou tdoors, ev en with the ab ility or signals to reach ndergrou nd locations. his iq ity is ital to connect all the disparate endpoints of a smart city don' t orget a smart city is a complex ecosy stem, not a simple point-to-point connection of a single ty pe of dev ice with a centraliz ed compu ting nction. mart cities connect waste ins, streetlights, pu lic transport, traffic, cleaning, environmental and many other sy stems, all of which req ire secu re, av ailab le, cost-ef ectiv e connectiv ity . Unlike other oT application areas, smart cities by definition have a clearly defined geographical area, making them ideal or priv ate networks. LoRaWAN can e an ideal solu tion or these— at mu ch lower cost and with greater ease of deploy ment than cellu lar networks. As alway s, it' s a case of selecting the appropriate technology or the appropriate application, and dif erent technologies can e complementary to each other. or ex ample, licensed spectru m technologies— the cellu lar networks— ty pically of er a ality of serv ice ased on an pE siness model, while nlicensed technologies hav e ewer regu lations and lower associated costs. owev er, there are no capex gu arantees with owning a priv ate network, and there is no opex business model flexibility. his ariance comes ef ore we ev en get into the applications that networks su pport, and it needs to address the specific topology of a city, the population and ilding density the capacity that already ex ists as well as ndamentals, su ch as whether the of a popu lation can su pport the cost of the serv ice eing prov ided. if erent network ty pes hav e dif erent strengths and weaknesses, and of ten the decision is not an either/ or estion. ltiple ty pes of connectiv ity can e selected to prov ide the est option across the dif erent dy namics. When it comes to the apps themselv es, LoRaWAN won' t e su itab le or the low-latency demands of au tonomou s ehicles, t it' s perf ect or tracking ses, managing streetlighting, streamlining waste collections and nu merou s other applications detailed in the se cases section elow. A key strength of LoRaWAN is its ab ility to su pport large nu mb ers of dev ices per gateway . epending on the policy applied and the time allowed on the network per dev ice per day more than 000 dev ices can e su pported. or simple applications, like a waste in signalling that it' s ll, this is ideal and, cou pled with the range of LoRaWAN— which is measu red in miles— it' s easy to see how LoRaWAN cou ld enab le many thou sands of low andwidth smart city dev ices cost ef ectiv ely and secu rely . 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 and low latency connectiv ity are ideal. A rther strength is that LoRaWAN dev ices ty pically hav e ery long attery lif e, making them ideal or long-term deploy ments. Use cases su ch as streetlighting, air ality sensors, in empty ing and many others can all hav e long deploy ment-liv es withou t the need or attery maintenance. his sav es on the ov erall cost of the solu tion. mart cities their natu re are sy ast-mov ing env ironments su ect to ex tremes of temperatu re, weather and the general rou gh and tu mb le of city lif e. LoRaWAN of ers rob st perf ormance, so it can continu e to operate in most ex treme situ ations, in spite of e.g., shock impacts or ib ration. inally among the low-power network options, only LoRaWAN has the matu re ecosy stem and ou t-of -the-b ox av ailab ility to su pport the wide range of smart city se cases, as illu strated elow. No other technology has any thing like the scale and depth of its dev eloper ecosy stem cou pled with the ease of deploy ment that LoRaWAN deliv ers. t theref ore has a su stantial and clearly defined position alongside cellular and other alternativ es in connecting smart cities.

• Cover