In a move designed to support further roaming, the global association of companies backing the open LoRaWAN standard for Internet of Things (IoT) low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs) has launched the Connect EU initiative to accelerate roaming across Europe, with participation from other regions.
The initiative supports and encourages collaboration among all LoRa Alliance members who are interested in leveraging LoRaWAN roaming. This effort, along with the recent LoRaWAN Backend Specification enhancements, shows the alliance’s commitment to the continuous improvement of this capability, and ensures active member engagement in roaming networks and hubs.
“The LoRa Alliance continues to drive a strategy of making LoRaWAN widely accessible and easy to use,” said Donna Moore, CEO and Chairwoman of the LoRa Alliance. “As of the end of 2020, we have public and private LoRaWAN networks active in more than 160 countries around the world.
"We also know that true global coverage is most quickly accomplished by interconnecting networks and allowing devices to seamlessly move between them, especially for logistics and tracking applications. Many of the largest global brands have supported this approach by implementing LoRaWAN roaming across their networks, making LoRaWAN more accessible than ever before.”
Recent updates to the TS002-1.1.0 LoRaWAN Backend Interfaces Technical Specification, completed in Q4 2020, enhance ease-of-use for roaming implementations and add support of LoRaWAN geolocation features for roaming devices.
LoRaWAN roaming covers both mobile and fixed assets of multi-national customers, whose devices leverage the radio coverage from roaming partners across multiple countries.
In addition to public-to-public network peering, LoRaWAN’s roaming capabilities also support public-to-private and private-to-private network peering. The LoRaWAN protocol also offers a unique feature, whereby a given device could be served simultaneously by several gateways that may belong to its home network and one or more visited networks. From a functionality perspective, this allows several networks’ gateways to act as one, with unified coverage serving the device.
In addition to being able to access LoRaWAN roaming via agreements with network operators, multiple LoRa Alliance members have launched roaming hubs that can mutualize multi-network interconnections. These hubs make it easier for network providers to connect to multiple vendors at one time.
Finally, roaming is already accessible via satellite network provider Lacuna Space, allowing for integrated terrestrial and satellite networks, and providing coverage to remote areas.
