Deep dive into a LoRaWAN Q&A featuring Charter Communications’ Wael Guibene. 

What is a smart city?

A smart city collects data from a variety of different sources and then analyzes that data to offer its citizens, business owners, and tourists a real-time view of what’s happening in their city. For example, smart cities can collect data from traffic cameras and sensors, analyze it to identify an accident blocking multiple lanes, and then dynamically send an alert to their citizens to avoid the area.

The ability for a city to analyze, visualize, and respond to the data it’s collecting is what separates a smart city from a “not-so-smart” city. A smart city isn’t just deploying sensors for sensor sake. It’s collecting the data from those sensors and leveraging the data to create greater efficiencies, such as shortened emergency response times, reduced water consumption, or improved public transportation systems.

All shapes and sizes

Smart city initiatives aren’t just for major metro areas. Communities of all sizes can benefit from technology that enables them to collect more data and glean new insights. Every city can be a smart city. There’s no perfect size, use case, or geographical location.

Smart cities are not about what’s happening today. It’s about leveraging what’s happening today to build a better, safer, and more efficient, tomorrow.

A smart city is defined by its ability to deliver intelligent capabilities and improve the quality of life for its citizens by using technology to respond in real time to the ever-changing environment.

As Marketing Committee Chair at LoRa Alliance, a non-profit committed to the development and promotion of the LoRaWAN, I’m often asked about LoRaWAN and how it can empower smart city solutions. Below are a few questions I commonly receive regarding LoRaWAN:

What is LoRaWAN?

LoRaWAN stands for long-range, wide area network and is an open wireless standard driven by the LoRa Alliance. LoRaWAN is the leading technology in low power-wide area networking. LoRaWAN wirelessly and securely connects battery-operated Internet of Things (IoT) devices and sensors to the cloud over long ranges.

What are the advantages of LoRaWAN compared to other network connectivity protocols?

1. Security – LoRaWAN utilizes end-to-end security on two layers: network encryption and application encryption, to ensure data encryption, privacy, protection and integrity.
2. Flexibility – LoRaWAN is built on an open standard, allowing for the technology and model deployment to be shaped to meet customer requirements.
3. Battery Lifetime – The low power, wide-area nature of LoRaWAN allows IoT devices to operate reliably for years, rather than months or weeks.
4. Remote Access – The low-power property of LoRaWAN, resulting in longer battery life of IoT devices, makes LoRaWAN technology advantageous for hard-to-access locations. In some cities, water meters are located underground, so access to the reading or replacing that meter’s battery annually, is an expensive maintenance cost. With LoRaWAN, you can remotely collect data from the device or send data to the device (such as firmware updates) in a seamless, cost-effective way.

Why does LoRaWAN connectivity lend itself to smart city applications?

Smart cities require sensors to be properly deployed and managed. Waste management, parking management, water management—they all rely on data collected from sensors deployed throughout the city. Wi-Fi and cellular technologies, traditionally speaking, are extremely power-hungry and the battery on these sensors can drain within weeks or months, as compared to the longer battery life offered by a LoRaWAN connection. Additionally, with LoRaWAN, you can cover a wider location range with fewer access points, referred to as gateways in the context of LoRaWAN. For cities that span multiple square miles, wider coverage is essential to ensure your entire community receives service.

What are some smart city applications that are best suited to LoRaWAN?

LoRaWAN ideal applications send and receive small amounts of data (100’s of bytes), do not have a real-time requirement and do not require high throughput.

1. Environmental Sensing – Sensors monitor noise, air and water pollution and keep citizens informed of air quality, conditions and pollutants. Parks and gardens irrigated optimally by monitoring soil moisture, thereby reducing waste and unscheduled maintenance.
2. Parking Management – Parking spaces monitored and managed more efficiently with LoRaWAN, generating incremental revenue as well as aiding parking providers to adapt pricing to real-world patterns. The city can monitor “no parking” spots to ensure fire, police and ambulance services have guaranteed access.
3. Street Lighting – LoRaWAN can enable cities to manage their energy footprint more effectively by detecting outages or broken lights. Intelligently managed lighting allows cities to promote security in urban areas as well as improve safety for pedestrians, vehicles and other road users.
4. Waste Management – LoRaWAN helps cities better understand trash or recycling bin statuses, thus enabling city service providers to react to real-time fill levels and avoid bin spill-over. This allows for more efficient refuse collection and reduces unnecessary pick-up of half-empty bins, thereby saving fuel and reducing pollution.

What are the benefits of a Spectrum Enterprise partnership for all network connectivity?

LoRaWAN is not in a niche market. It extends beyond a single vertical, especially when augmented by cellular, WiFi and other network technologies. A Spectrum Enterprise partnership creates a layering effect. It’s an additional blanket of coverage. Meaning, if you don’t already have a fiber infrastructure available from Spectrum Enterprise, we can still deploy LoRaWAN where fiber isn’t available to provide coverage for your IoT devices. It’s a complimentary solution that extends connectivity coverage, giving every city the opportunity to become a connected, smart city. This network flexibility expands what solutions a city can deploy regardless of the connectivity coverage in the area.

To learn more about how LoRaWAN can empower smart city solutions, contact us.