Kerlink and Semtech Testing Kerlink’s LoRaWAN Geolocation Solution in Dense Urban Setting

February 27, 2018

The live test in Aguascalientes City, Mexico, provides large-scale field-testing opportunities to demonstrate the benefits of geolocation and to show the impact of the quality of coverage on accuracy, when the number of gateways and location of installation points varies in an urban setting. It is the first demonstration of Kerlink’s end-to-end network environment, which combines Wirnet iBTS 915 MHz gateways, the Wanesy Management Center, which is the company’s core network management suite, and Wanesy Geolocation, the new geolocation solver.

Land-based LoRaWAN geolocation uses a different technology than GPS, eliminating the requirement for costly and power-hungry data processing. Gartner forecasts that a third of the world’s 15 billion connected devices will be critically dependent on geodata by the end of 2020.

“Geolocation is simple to deploy and operate because each LoRaWAN end-device is natively potentially located without the need to add a costly GPS module inside it,” said Yannick Delibie, Kerlink CTIO. “This dramatically optimizes power consumption and reduces device hardware costs. No additional hardware is required, assuming that gateways are geolocation-ready, like Kerlink Wirnet iBTS gateways.”

Semtech, whose LoRa devices and wireless radio frequency technology (LoRa Technology) transceivers are central to the implementation of LoRaWAN networks around the world, actively collaborated with Kerlink on equipment installation in Aguascalientes City, a metropolitan area of about 1 million population.

‘Kerlink’s Wirnet iBTS Compact, based on our industrial-grade reference design, offers improved gateway clock synchronization for its embedded GPS to further improve geolocation accuracy, especially in a dense urban area.’

Marc Pegulu, vice president and general manager of Semtech’s Wireless and Sensing Product Group