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LoRaWAN ® Relay Technical Recommendations TR016-1.0.0 ©2026 LoRa Alliance ® Page 3 of 20 The authors reserve the right to change specifications without notice. Contents 68 1 Conventions ................................................................................................................. 4 69 2 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 5 70 3 Relay recommended use cases ................................................................................... 6 71 3.1 General Considerations............................................................................................ 6 72 3.2 Deployment use cases ............................................................................................. 7 73 3.2.1 Smart Metering, Smart Building, and Smart City Deployments ........................... 7 74 3.2.2 Logistics and Satellite-Based Connectivity ......................................................... 7 75 Important Deployment Considerations .............................................................................. 8 76 3.2.3 Essential Gateway dependency ......................................................................... 8 77 3.2.4 Not a mesh network ........................................................................................... 8 78 3.2.5 Not a Gateway replacement ............................................................................... 8 79 3.3 Relay Traffic Constraints .......................................................................................... 9 80 3.4 End-Device Compliance and Relay mode ................................................................ 9 81 3.5 Class Consideration ................................................................................................. 9 82 4 Enabling/disabling the relay mode ............................................................................. 10 83 4.1 During the JOIN procedure .................................................................................... 10 84 4.2 During an active MAC session with WOR activated ............................................... 13 85 4.3 During an active MAC session with WOR deactivated ........................................... 14 86 5 Practical Constraints .................................................................................................. 17 87 5.1 Relay operation in US915 ...................................................................................... 17 88 5.2 Network time synchronization ................................................................................ 17 89 5.3 Relay operation constraints .................................................................................... 17 90 5.4 ADR mechanism for end-device under Relay ......................................................... 17 91 5.5 Relay Notifications ................................................................................................. 17 92 6 Glossary .................................................................................................................... 19 93 7 Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 20 94 95 Figures 96 Figure 1: Smart Metering, smart building, smart city use cases ............................................. 7 97 Figure 2: Logistics, Satellite Indoor connectivity use cases ................................................... 7 98 Figure 3: BATTERY LIFE Simulation - LoRaWAN® END DEVICE under Relay.................... 8 99 Figure 4: Battery life Simulation – LoRaWAN® Relay ........................................................... 9 100 Figure 5: JOIN flow chart with/without relay ........................................................................ 12 101 Figure 6: transitions from JOINED_WOR_ACTIVATED to JOIN_WOR_DEACTIVATED .... 14 102 Figure 7: transitions from JOINED_WOR_DEACTIVATED to JOIN_WOR_ACTIVATED .... 15 103 104

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