Abbas Shah

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7 years, 6 months ago.

Can the MultiTech xDot be used as a LoRaWAN gateway?

I know it's generally meant to be a node but are there APIs available to program it as a gateway?

2 Answers

Jan Jongboom
7 years, 6 months ago.

No. The xDot contains an SX1272 radio chip, which is single channel. Single channel gateways are not LoRaWAN compliant.

You can do point-to-point between two xDots using LoRa modulation, but that is not LoRaWAN.

Thank you for the answer. Will I have access to the PHY layer to program the module p2p communication? Is there example code that does this?

posted by Abbas Shah 20 Jun 2017

No, the xDot does not give raw access to the PHY; but it's relatively easy to handle the radio part (switching frequencies, open TX and RX windows on demand) through the public API, which should at least get you somewhere. P2P example is here.

posted by Jan Jongboom 21 Jun 2017
Helmut Tschemernjak
7 years, 6 months ago.

I did some SX1276 generic Radio driver enhancements, supporting multiple radio modules (HopeRF RFM95, Murata CMWX1ZZABZ-078 modules and the SX1276MB1MAS/SX1276MB1LAS boards. It allows simple packet peer to peer communication. The mbed library source and sample code is here:

https://developer.mbed.org/questions/78000/Support-for-the-STM-B_L072Z_LRWAN1-LoRa-/

I developed in addition (private project so far) a complete radio protocol stack supporting the above listed LoRa modules without a need for the LoRa concentrator. Supporting secure passwords authorization and AES content encryption, reliable message transfers with up to 1000 nodes using the modules listed above. This is not LoRaWAN but it is way more flexible and efficient, secure and reliable peer to peer, and peer to station communication. The goal is to use this protocol with mbed, Arduino and Linux (PI) based operating systems. My new RadioShuttle protocol solution will be presented at Maker Faire in Hannover in August.

If you feel like me, that you need something different than LoRaWAN, I am working on it.