Benchmarking and testing LoRaWAN network hardware base stations

One significant IoT application sector is smart buildings. It integrates technology into buildings, such as monitoring various parameters of the building, such as temperature and humidity, and transmits this data for processing and processing, and finally provides the resulting data to the end user of the building through some useful service. A smart building needs a data network through which diverse data can be collected and transmitted. Typically, the amount of data in a smart building network is not very large, and for this, LoRaWAN offers a cost-effective solution for building your own private network to which most smart building devices can be connected.

In the project, a private network utilising LoRaWAN has been built in the building of the Kokkola University Centre Chydenius. The network has been implemented using LoRaWAN base stations from different manufacturers. Indoor coverage tests have been carried out in the network with the aim of obtaining information on what kind of equipment needs the implementation of the network will set for an apartment building, for example, and whether there are significant differences between the base stations of different equipment manufacturers. Various actuators using the LoRaWAN protocol have been used in the tests, as well as Adeunis network testers that measure network operation.

LoRaWAN enables the construction of a completely private and comprehensive network in large buildings without the need for a telecom operator or other infrastructure of the corporate network.