LoRaWAN Technology

LoRa^® is a wireless communication technology developed to create the low-power, wide-area networks (LPWANs) required for machine-to-machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

Key features of LoRa^® technology:

• Long range: >15 km / 9 mi range
• Low-power: 5-10 year expected battery lifetime
• Low-cost: from end-node sensor cost to upfront infrastructure investment
• Secure: with embedded end-to-end AES-128 encryption of data
• Geolocation: enables indoor/outdoor tracking without GPS

LoRaWAN^® is a global LPWAN specification created by the LoRa Alliance^® to drive a single standard for seamless interoperability across the industry. LoRa technology is ideally suited for the applications:

• Smart Cities
• Smart Home and Building
• Smart Environment
• Smart Metering
• Smart Agriculture
• Smart Industrial
• Retail and Logistics

As a board member and sponsor of the LoRa Alliance and strong player on the LoRaWAN® market, ST offers several affordable, easy-to-use devices and hardware tools to evaluate and develop LoRa^® solutions.

• The STM32WL MCU series is the world’s first LoRa®-enabled System-on-Chip. The STM32WL is fully open and supports multi-modulation, making it the ideal choice for LPWAN and IoT developments with outstanding ultra-low power consumption without compromising on performance. 
• The NUCLEO-WL55JC1 board for 868, 915 and 923 MHz RF bands and the NUCLEO-WL55JC2 for 433 and 470 MHz RF bands provide an affordable and flexible way for users to try out new concepts and quickly build LoRaWAN^® prototypes with the STM32WL Series microcontroller, choosing from the various combinations of performance, power consumption, and features. The boards feature an STM32WL55JCI7 along with ARDUINO^® Uno V3 connectivity support and ST morpho headers. They do not require any separate probe as it integrates the STLINK-V3E debugger and programmer. LoRaWAN stack is available in source code format in STM32CubeWL.

Alternatively, the following hardware tools offer also a fast and efficient way to build LoRaWAN^® end-node devices when combined with the LoRaWAN^® software expansion package for STM32Cube  (I-CUBE-LRWAN) including source code and a set of application examples.

• The P-NUCLEO-LRWAN2 pack for 868, 915 and 923 MHz RF bands comes with a gateway and an end-node. The gateway combines an STM32F7 Nucleo board and an ARDUINO^®-compatible shield with a Semtech^® SX1301 transceiver. The LoRaWAN^® end-node features an STM32L073 Nucleo board and an STM32L052-powered USI module, along with ST’s sensors including our LSM303AGR MEMS accelerometer/gyroscope, LIS3MDL magnetometer and LPS22HB pressure sensor, and ST's HTS221 temperature and humidity sensor.
• The P-NUCLEO-LRWAN3 pack for 433 and 470 MHz RF bands contains a gateway and an end-node. The gateway includes an STM32F7 Nucleo board which controls an ARDUINO^®-compatible shield with an embedded Semtech^® SX1301 transceiver. The LoRaWAN^® end-node features an STM32L073 Nucleo board and an STM32L071-powered RisingHF module on an ARDUINO^®-compatible shield, along with several motion and environmental sensors including the LSM6DS3 accelerometer, ST's LPS22HB pressure sensor, and our HTS221 temperature and humidity sensor.
• STM32 Discovery kit for LoRa^® and other LPWAN protocols with an all-in-one open LoRa^® module powered by an ultra-low-power STM32L072 32-bit microcontroller and an SX1276 RF transceiver
• STM32 LoRa^® expansion board for the STM32 Nucleo (I-NUCLEO-LRWAN1) featuring a low-cost USI^® LPWAN module supporting LoRa^® technology
• Low-power wireless Nucleo pack (P-NUCLEO-LRWAN1) including STM32 Nucleo-64 development board and LoRa^® expansion board with high-performance SX1272 FSK/OOK RF transceiver