With the continuous development of Internet of Things technology, wireless communication technology has been widely used in various fields. LoRa (Long Range) is a low-power, long-distance wireless communication technology, while LoRa MESH is an ad hoc network communication protocol based on LoRa technology. To put it simply, LoRa MESH is a MESH networking solution based on LoRa transmission.

What is LoRa Technology?

Before introducing LoRa MESH, you need to understand what LoRa technology is.

LoRa (Low Power Wide Area Network) technology is an Internet of Things communication technology developed by Semtech, which is characterized by low power consumption, long range and strong anti-interference ability.

 01 Long distance

LoRa has a low transmission rate but high sensitivity, and its transmission distance is much longer than other wireless communication technologies, and it can transmit distances of several kilometers in outdoor environments, and even longer distances in urban environments. Therefore, it is suitable for long-distance, low-rate, low-data applications.

02 Low power consumption

LoRa technology uses a low-power transmission method, which enables the device to operate on battery power for long periods of time. This feature is ideal for devices that require long-term operation and are difficult to replace batteries, such as sensor nodes, smart city devices, etc.

 03 Strong anti-interference ability

LoRa uses spread-spectrum technology, which makes it excellent anti-interference. When encountering external electromagnetic signal interference during communication, LoRa can continue to communicate stably, while traditional wireless technology cannot communicate.

 04 Connect at scale

It supports large-scale device connectivity, and each base station can handle thousands of devices at the same time, making it suitable for building wide-area Internet of Things (LPWAN) networks.

What is LoRa MESH?

LoRa MESH is an ad hoc network communication protocol based on LoRa technology. Using LoRa wireless communication technology, multiple devices are formed into a self-organizing network to form a mesh topology to realize the interconnection between devices. It has both the advantages of LoRa technology and the characteristics of Mesh ad hoc network.

01 Ad hoc network features

LoRa MESH networks have the characteristics of self-organizing networks, which can automatically build and maintain networks. When a device joins or leaves the network, the network automatically adjusts the topology to ensure the stability of data transmission. This ad hoc networking feature makes LoRa MESH networks highly flexible and scalable.

Routing node: The routing node receives data from the network for route update and data forwarding.

Endpoint: Endpoint nodes do not have the routing function, and endpoints are generally deployed at the edge of the network.

02 Multi-hop transmission

The LoRa MESH network adopts a multi-hop transmission method, and data can be forwarded through multiple nodes and finally reach the destination node. This multi-hop transmission mode can effectively extend the communication distance, improve the signal penetration ability, and reduce the communication pressure of a single node.

03 Low power consumption

The low-power design allows the device to maintain a long operating time while transmitting data. This is especially important for devices that need to operate for long periods of time, such as smart homes, environmental monitoring, and other fields.

04 High capacity

Multi-hop communication improves the capacity and reliability of the network, and even if a node fails, data can still be transmitted through other paths. Therefore, LoRa MESH has a high capacity and can support the access of a large number of devices. This makes LoRa MESH networks very suitable for large-scale IoT scenarios, such as smart cities, smart agriculture, etc.

05 Low cost

LoRa MESH lowers the cost barrier for IoT applications by employing low-cost devices and solutions. More enterprises and developers will be able to participate in the innovation and application of the Internet of Things.

06 Wide range of applications

LoRa MESH network can be widely used in smart home, industrial sensors, wireless alarm security systems, building automation solutions, smart agriculture and other application scenarios due to its characteristics of automatic network construction and support for large-scale device access.

 LoRa MESH technology communication mode

The  EBYTE LoRa MESH network supports four communication modes, Unicast, Multicast, Broadcast and Anycast, and users can choose different communication modes according to different application scenarios.

Unicast and broadcast are the simplest and most basic communication methods, and routes and return request responses are automatically established under unicast to determine the data transmission path. In broadcast mode, all routing nodes start a data relay once after receiving the data.

The multicast mechanism is relatively complex, and one-to-many communication can be realized, and the user needs to configure the multicast group address first, similar to the public address. Omnicast is usually used for data exchange between different networks, and data is not forwarded under ubicast. According to the different destination addresses, two communication methods can be realized: unicast and broadcast, and users can transmit any data to any module within the communication range.

What is LoRaWAN?

LoRaWAN is also an IoT communication protocol based on LoRa technology, and its main features are low power consumption, long distance, and wide area coverage. Its main purpose is to enable interconnection between IoT devices.

 In LoRaWAN, IoT devices transmit data to a gateway through a LoRa module, which in turn transmits data to a cloud server via Ethernet for storage and processing. IoT devices in LoRaWAN can use different frequency bands to communicate to meet the needs of different application scenarios. At the same time, LoRaWAN also supports a variety of different data transmission methods, including unicast, multicast and broadcast.

EBYTE LoRa MESH products

Based on the independent research and development of LoRa spread spectrum technology, the network adopts a decentralized structure, and the entire network is composed of routing nodes and terminal nodes, which does not require a central node or coordinator to participate in network management, and the network is simple to build and easy to use. At the same time, the LoRa MESH network has no limit on the routing depth when broadcasting communication, which can form a huge MESH network, and the theoretical number of networks can reach 65,535 nodes, which is suitable for large-scale Internet of Things product applications.

✅ LoRa MESH: Advanced LoRa modulation is used to greatly improve the coverage of the entire MESH network.

✅ Ultra-large network capacity: The number of theoretical network networks is as high as 65,535.

✅ Decentralization: The entire network is composed of only two types of nodes: terminal nodes and routing nodes, and no central node or coordinator is required to participate in network management.

✅ Automatic routing: When initiating a data request, each routing node can automatically initiate a connection with the surrounding nodes to determine the data transmission path without the coordinator participating in path planning.

✅ Network self-healing: When a link fails, the routing node re-establishes a new path after several communication attempts.

✅ Other features: multi-level routing, path optimization, avoidance mechanism, multi-check, encrypted transmission, and remote configuration.