»Face-to-face – there's no better way to do business.«

A full suite of innovations will be presented by the LoRa Alliance at the 19th Wireless Congress: Systems & Applications on November 17. Donna Moore, CEO of the LoRa Alliance is convinced that there is no better way to do business than face-to-face.

?   How important is Electronica 2022 and Wireless Congress 2022 ffor the LoRa Alliance and its members?

!   Donna Moore: Electronica and Wireless Congress are very important shows for the LoRa Alliance and our member companies. It is fantastic to see the industry moving beyond COVID and returning to live, face-to-face events. We’re particularly excited to resume our partnership with these events and to deliver our program that will address the latest advancements and trends related to the LoRaWAN standard. Topics to be covered include:

• Powering end-to-end solutions that scale with LoRaWAN,
• LoRaWAN Network Collaboration (Roaming),
• LoRaWAN Relay: expanding coverage with battery-operated and low-cost relays,
• Next Generation LPWAN: The Intersection of IoT and Blockchain,
• FUOTA Deployment for Scale with LPWAN,
• Geolocation Applications and Services supported by LPWAN technologies.

Beyond our program, multiple LoRa Alliance members will be exhibiting at both events to showcase their latest products, technologies and solutions that use the LoRaWAN standard to achieve business efficiencies while also helping to improve lives and protect our planet’s resources. In short, Electronica and Wireless Congress will provide an amazing opportunity to learn about LoRaWAN and how it is supporting global massive IoT.

?   How has the wireless market and the LoRa Alliance evolved since the last Electronica? What impact do the current crises?

!   Moore: There has been considerable evolution of the wireless market since the last Electronica. What has become very clear is that open standards, collaboration, partnerships, end to end solutions, choice, interoperability and innovation are needed to meet the needs of massive IoT. This has resulted in LoRaWAN cementing its position as the leading LPWAN technology and the only one that is deploying at scale globally.

In terms of the current crises and their impact on the wireless market, the reality is that all these issues have driven innovation and created opportunity that only wireless technologies can solve. COVID-19 significantly accelerated the digital transformation – which relied on wireless sensors to provide information on cleanliness, distance tracking, room occupancy, air quality, to name a few use cases.

No technology is better suited than LoRaWAN to help solve current global challenges such as labor shortages, water conservation and quality, food insecurities, air quality, safety and asset tracking, among many others. The lessons learned from Covid have allowed for incredibly rapid technology development and deployment, which allows businesses to address the planet’s critical issues. Because LoRaWAN is globally available, low-cost, easy to deploy with flexible deployment and network options, does not require power supplies, can transmit over long distances and provides deep penetration, it is the solution of choice to support these global challenges.

?   Which are the current challenges faced by companies, using wireless technologies, and the members of the LoRa Alliance?

!   Moore: The good news is that proof of concepts (POCs) have been extremely successful, with the length of time reducing from 1 year to 3-6 months. And the value / ROI is always greater than expected. The technology works, results are superior, and scale is easy to drive once deployed. The issue is change management with customer stakeholders and ensuring that all departments are in the loop and onboard. That is why ease of development, deployment and use are extremely important.

?   What are the newest innovations from the LoRa Alliance and its members?

!   Moore: The LoRa Alliance itself just announced two major innovations. The first is updating the LoRaWAN standard with the relay feature, which extends LoRaWAN coverage for metering, utilities, smart cities and industrial applications. These new battery-operated relays offer an easy to deploy, low power, low-cost approach to achieve robust network coverage in challenging environments. This allows LoRaWAN to attain excellent coverage in use cases requiring deep indoor or underground coverage, or relay data on satellite connected LoRaWAN devices within proximity. 

The second recent innovation, the codec API feature makes LoRaWAN easy to develop and accelerates device onboarding to enable massive IoT. When using LoRaWAN to transport application payloads, messages are very compactly encoded to minimize bandwidth usage. As packages reach the application server, they must be decoded to be read and processed. Previously, each device manufacturer or application developer had to write their own codex API for each device and/or application being connected to the server, which created friction for device onboarding. With the new payload codec API specification, standardized code can be implemented everywhere, achieving considerable savings in terms of reduced complexity and accelerated time to market.

In addition to continuously updating the LoRaWAN standard as an alliance, our members are always innovating and bringing new products and solutions to market. Many of these will be discussed during the LoRa Alliance’s program during Wireless Congress 2022.

?   What can Electronica visitors and congress participants expect this year?

!   Moore: We are expecting a very active show with an extremely engaged audience; our experience with the LoRaWAN World Expo earlier this year was that the industry is ready to be back at events in person, and that there is no better way to do business than face-to-face. We’re excited to be involved in this year’s show and to have the opportunity to update the industry about the latest developments with LoRaWAN.

?   Thank you for the interview.

Donna Moore

is CEO & Chairwoman of the LoRa Alliance. In this role, she oversees the organization, its strategy and direction to drive the global adoption of the LoRaWAN standard.

Moore has nearly two decades of experience launching new companies and growing businesses across a variety of industries and competitive environments. Most recently, she was CEO of SpireSpark International, a company that provides highly skilled technical and operational expertise to design and build certification, compliance, and conformance programs.

Prior to that, she served as the executive director of the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), where she successfully led DLNA to become the de facto IoT standard for streaming video, audio, and picture files to each other over a LAN. Under her leadership, DNLA achieved global market adoption with over 4 billion certified devices deployed worldwide. Moore holds a Bachelor of Science degree from San Diego State University.

Session LoRaWAN at Wireless Congress 2022 on November 17, 2022