LoRa is available on the Vision XT meter platform and available in all standard meter forms from 1S to 45S.
A Truly Open Future Proof Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) System
LoRa® is a long range Internet of Things (IoT) system designed for the ever expanding IoT. It is an open system that allows anyone to manufacture devices which can communicate over a LoRa®WAN network. The openness removes the hand-cuffs that restricts companies to a particular vendor. With LoRa®, utilities can design their system to facilitate communicating with electric, water and gas meters all on the same network. Other devices like street light controllers, transformer temperature monitors and distribution monitoring devices can all be added as needed.
LoRa® is designed for low power, long range applications which are well suited for Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). It operates in the 900 Mhz ISM bands but the technology allows its signals to transmit above the noise in these bands. Visions system transmits a maximum of 42 bytes at just under 400 ms using 1 watt (30 db) radios.
The LoRa® Alliance is comprised of over 500 companies all working in concert to develop the absolute best IoT system in the World. The technology deployed with LoRa® is second to none and creates independence for its users. There are no monthly fees associated with data and no restriction on the amount of data you can accumulate.
LoRa® is scalable to the size of your requirement. You can choose from 8 to 64 channel gateways. Thus allowing 1,500,000 messages per day up to 12,000,000 messages per day from a single gateway. If you buy an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) system with proprietary technology, you will be handcuffed to that vendor for 15 to 20 years or longer. In order to achieve competitive pricing for meters, gateways and head-end systems, LoRa® is your only choice.
LoRa® uses a Star Technology to achieve robust communications
LoRa® uses a Star Technology to achieve robust communications. Up to 20 mile coverage can be achieved with exceptional repeatability using LoRa®. Mesh systems are dependent on other devices to provide a communications path and are often limited in range. Point to Point and Point to Multipoint systems allow multiple pathways to achieve maximum performance.
There are multiple vendors for meters, gateways, headend systems and other distribution automation devices with more being developed everyday. Vision uses gateways from various vendors to match the unique requirements of each system. The customer then chooses the vendors equipment that best suits their requirements.
Why LoRa® ?
1. Highly Robust - LoRa® signal is very resistant to both in-band and out-of-band interference mechanisms due to a BT > 1 and fully asynchronous nature.
2. Multipath / fading Resistant, the chirp pulse is relatively broadband and thus LoRa® offers immunity to multipath and fading, making it ideal for use in urban and suburban environments, where both mechanisms dominate.
3. Long Range Capability, for a fixed output power and throughput, the link budget of LoRa® exceeds that of conventional FSK.
4. Doppler Resistant, Doppler shift introduces a negligible shift in the time axis of the baseband signal.
5. Enhanced Network Capacity, orthogonal spreading factors enables multiple transmissions at the same time and on the same channel.
6. Ranging / Localization, inherent property of LoRa® is the ability to linearly discriminate between frequency and time errors.
7. Constant Envelope Mod Scheme, same low-cost and low-power high-efficiency FSK PA stages can be re-used without modification.
Technology Comparison Summary
