The practical range of lorawan (Long Range Wide Area Network) in megacities depends heavily on building density and electromagnetic state, with typical values between 1 and 5 kilometers, while for rural areas it may be over 15 kilometers. Take the example of the Paris Smart City project. A lorawan gateway installed within a 30-meter-high building (14dBm transmission power) has the capability to cover an urban area of 2.3 kilometers in radius, serve 12,000 smart meters (SF9 spread factor), and support a data packet of 98.7%. In the city reinforced concrete building complex, the weakening of the signal is approximately -25dB/km (three times that in the suburbs), but with gateway density optimization (1.2 per square kilometer), the stability of terminal connection is also 92%.
The influence of building height on the range of the signal has nonlinear characteristics. Experiments conducted within the Lujiazui Financial District in Shanghai reveal that the lorawan gateway (470MHz frequency band) installed on a 100-meter building has a coverage radius of 4.8 kilometers, while that of the ground base station is as low as 0.9 kilometers. When the equipment uses a directional antenna (gain of 5dBi), the signal loses strength by only -12dB after passing through 18 layers of concrete floor slabs (receiving sensitivity -132 DBM) and is 40% more than when using an omnidirectional antenna. In 2023, the air quality sensor network (800 nodes) deployed in Shinjuku Ward in Tokyo verified that the data bit error rate from within 1.5 kilometers of the gateway was less than 0.1%, and it went up to 1.7% within 3 kilometers.
Multipath interference and frequency band selection contribute significantly to actual coverage. In Shenzhen City’s Nanshan District, the 915MHz frequency band lorawan network (the density of which is 1.5 per square kilometer) is deployed. In the high-density glass curtain wall area, the signal reflection loss is -18dB, but the transmission success rate is still greater than 95% through adaptive data rate (ADR). Comparative test shows that the 868MHz frequency band has 22% greater penetration capacity in the same condition than the 915MHz frequency band, yet it has a 15% chance of interference from the ISM frequency band. In Singapore Smart Street Lamp project with 3,000 nodes, optimized SF12 spread spectrum mode can achieve the effective maximum transmitting distance up to 5.2 kilometers (<5% packet loss rate).
Quantitative weather signal attenuation was quantitatively analyzed and shows that the heavy rain (rainfall of 50mm/h) will make lorawan signals attenuate by an extra -0.2dB/km, whereas the influence of thick fog (visibility <100 meters) can be zero. The cargo tracking system of the Hong Kong International Airport (with 200 lorawan tags deployed) had 97.3% data integrity during the typhoon season (wind speed of 25m/s), with a positioning error median of ±82 meters. If the equipment employs an IP67 casing and cold-resistant design at -40°C, the impact of extreme temperatures on RF performance is less than ±0.5dB.
According to Semtech’s actual measurement data, the lorawan link budget in typical urban scenarios ranges from 157dB (urban canyons) to 168dB (open space). The Manhattan, New York shared bike system (18,000 smart locks) lowered the cost of operation to $0.03 per device per month through a hybrid network of gateway cellular return (LTE Cat-1) and lorawan (89% cost savings over the pure cellular solution). The world’s global cities are anticipated to be equipped with 470 million lorawan devices in 2026 (51% of the LPWA market) by ABI Research. Its reliable coverage in 5 kilometers and $0.1 annually communication cost are fostering the widescale uptake of the perception layer infrastructure in smart cities.