Semtech brought LoRa to 2.4 GHz through their SX1280 & SX1281 transceivers to enable hardware manufacturers to design region-independent products, rather than region-specific products in the 433, 868, and 915 MHz bands a few years back.
Things Industries announced support for LoRa 2.4GHz in The Things Network community network and its open-source stack at The Things Conference 2021 last week.
However, switching to 2.4 GHz has a cost since range, one of the key selling points of LoRa, will be reduced compared to sub-GHz frequency, and that makes it most suitable for applications that work in different regions such as maritime and intercontinental logistics applications.
Wilhelmsen has partnered with The Things Industries (TTI) and selected Semtech’s LoRa devices as the foundation for its new global 2.4GHz maritime IoT of the Seas platform to deliver an ecosystem of cost-effective, robust and proven IoT solutions and make them available to its diverse global customer base, at “land and sea”.
Wilhelmsen can now collect more accurate data from a ship’s assets, such as the condition of machinery and engines, leaks, environmental measures, asset location, etc. The data is used to perform preventive maintenance, reducing the risk of ships grounding or incidents and thus reducing costs.
Many applications like smart agriculture, smart cities, and most asset tracking solutions will not benefit from LoRa 2.4GHz, so as I understand it, it has been rather a niche technology, with a few devices and modules from Miromico, mcf88, Embit, and Vicotee, as well as gateways from Multitech, Mikrotik and IMST introduced since last year.
That’s why LoRa 2.4 GHz is also called the “IoT for the seas” until other use cases find a way to leverage the technology.
I could not find any recent, specific information about LoRa 2.4 GHz on The Things Network website, but more details should soon surface in the documentation.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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