LoRa Alliance unveils advanced future development roadmap

The LoRa Alliance, a global consortium supporting the open LoRaWAN standard for internet of things (IoT) low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs), has released an advanced development roadmap for LoRaWAN. The plan encompasses enhancements to extend market reach and simplify implementation, including improving connectivity in challenging environments and facilitating seamless device integration.

These improvements aim to augment scalability and interoperability, increasing the functionality of LoRaWAN across various industries. The roadmap outlines the future evolution of the LoRaWAN open standard for IoT communications, showcasing efforts to make the technology quicker and simpler to deploy.

Speaking about the developments, Donna Moore, CEO and Chairwoman of the LoRa Alliance, said, "The members of the LoRa Alliance have been diligent in their work to lay the foundation, strategically evolving LoRaWAN to achieve the significant scaling that is taking place in IoT." She added that, "As such, it is the only LPWAN that can address the requirements of any organization looking to deploy large-scale, low-power IoT solutions today."

The roadmap also hints at major enhancements of several attributes already integrated into the LoRaWAN standard, such as expanding addressable markets. This includes further refining the long-range frequency hopping spread spectrum (LR-FHSS), enhancing LoRaWAN's signal reach in environments with a lot of noise or physical obstacles and adding fast, low-power network discovery.

In terms of hyperscalability, proposed developments include simplifying deployments, adding GS1-compliant identifiers (like RFIDs and barcodes) support via LoRaWAN and facilitating onboarding of LoRaWAN end-devices by networks with an automated device profile download system.

Further innovations include strengthening device interoperability through the standardisation of application server and gateway interfaces and introducing crypto-agility to LoRaWAN, allowing for the implementation of various current and future crypto-suites to be added to the LoRaWAN Link Layer.

In line with the anticipated jump from millions to billions of connections in the coming years, Moore stated, "It is tremendously validating to look at the future of the LoRaWAN standard and know that we are building from an exceptionally broad and solid foundation." She emphasised the unlimited potential of LoRaWAN as the technology continues to expand and enhance its features.