GNU Radio software-defined radio (SDR) implementation of a LoRa transceiver

It would take more than just "a few extra modulation and coding modes". At 0.3 kbps, even a single 100-byte packet would already use up one whole third of the available airtime for the channel. (On the current slowest WiFi speed of 1 Mb/s, that packet takes a fraction of a percent of the available airtime, and even that's slow enough that some newer APs disable the older 802.11b speeds by default and set the slowest speed to 6 Mb/s.) And due to how the WiFi protocol works, each AP periodically (usually every 100/1024 seconds, so around 10 times per second) broadcasts a beacon at the slowest rate it accepts (and AFAIK the beacon is nowadays larger than 100 bytes).

It would probably require at least changing how the clear channel assessment works, to allow for overlapping transmissions, but that's a fundamental part of the standard. Once you're going that far, it probably makes more sense to define a new protocol, one better tuned for that use case.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah

[2]: https://www.silextechnology.com/connectivity-solutions/wifi-...

This is also disregarding that "a few extra modulation schemes" is costly to implement. Narrow band schemes (like GMSK) are incompatible with wide band protocols like LoRa or WiFi with spread spectrum/chipping or OFDM. (at least if you are interested in the same performance to price ballpark) Of course many things nowadays use digital baseband so it's in theory flexible, but the front end is still a major limiting factor, unless you use many-GHz RFADC/DAC which still suffer from wide vs narrow band problems.

Also, most long range protocols are meant for ultra low power applications like smart-ag or energy harvesting which WiFi does not support.

Considering the existing amount of congestion with WiFi, if we want to increase range further, we'd likely need more chipping codes to fit in the same frequency allocation, which will increase the noise floor for everybody, thus reducing the range... etc

Better connect to something else nearer to you, making a fairer use of the available radio spectrum, or if you absolutely need to connect to your own equipment, switch to a protocol more suited for such needs, like LoRa or even a custom-purpose version of Wi-Fi called HaLow (aka .11ah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah)

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=motorola+canopy&sort=byDate&ty...

> From what I'm gathering, Canopy can be deployed over unlicensed frequencies (2.4 and 5 Ghz), allows for hundreds of subscribers connecting to a single Access Point, can provide up bandwidth in the 5-10 Mbps range, etc.

I live on a small hobby farm, and I use these sensors to measure things around the garden. We have very hot, dry summers so keeping track of the soil moisture is super useful. And in winter, it's nice to be able to track when different parts of the property freeze.

Here's a screenshot of my Grafana dashboard, which might shed some more light on it: https://imgur.com/a/vGNnUNW

In Europe, the new Unified Patent Court (UPC) will probably rubberstamp them, using the "as such" and the "technical effect" loopholes. Without any appeal possible to the European Court of Justice.

For example, LoRa uses spread spectrum and there are many patents on spread sprectrum in general (don't know about LoRa in particular).

This has been quite standard for 20+ years. For instance 3G spreading codewords are also orthogonal. If fact, I think LoRa took a lot from mobile/cellular where all those technics have been used for a long time.

Edit: As used in 3G, the orthogonal spreading codewords (OVSF) are actually quite simple to generate for a given spreading factor: https://www.mathworks.com/help/comm/ref/ovsfcodegenerator.ht...

- Rural sensors attached to things like grain bins, where a pair of AA batteries can last multiple seasons sending periodic temperature updates and alerts if the temperature starts climbing at a faster than expected rate

- Mobile rural sensors worked quite well too. These were attached to things like tractors and had GPS receivers attached for real-time position tracking. Power wasn't nearly as much of a concern but rather taking advantage of the long-range capability while staying inside the unlicensed ISM band and respecting FCC/ISED power limits.

- Low-density urban where the neighbourhoods are made up primarily of single-family homes and not multi-storey condos or apartments. It worked well but honestly something like Zigbee would have likely been a more appropriate technology since it would have allowed for even lower power in the end devices.

At the end of the day, the client devices don't have that much broadcast power - so if you run your own LoRA gateway and are not in a densely populated area, nobody cares if you use a lot of bandwidth.

Just don't use all of the bandwidth and keep monitoring the band. You can always throttle down your clients if someone else shows up.