LoRa and LoRaWAN are a group of protocols that are supposed to help with effective and not too costly implementation of low power wide area networks for purposes of the Internet of Things (IoT) – let that be in the industrial, logistics or smart cities sectors. LoRaWAN is a network through which various LoRa-enabled devices can communicate. In this thesis I focus on the protocol LoRa and its properties. The LoRa Alliance organization, the developer of LoRaWAN and LoRa technologies advertises a very high range for LoRa, that is 2-4 km in the city and up to 15 km outside urban areas. But how does this work out in reality? My supposition was that due to various environmental factors the performance is lower than advertised. I decided to test this claim on multiple terrain types and connection parameters. With the LoRa gateway set up at different spots, an assistant, and a LoRa node in a car I drove in and around Ljubljana and came to the expected conclusion. While taking into consideration that the equipment I used was in the lower price range and that the LoRa gateway was not always optimally positioned, the results show that the range of the LoRa protocol in the real world is not even half of the advertised one.
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