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PSA: The LoRa PHY layer is proprietary (feddit.uk)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by rah@feddit.uk to c/meshtastic@mander.xyz

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LoRa modems are all black boxes, available only from a single company. Meanwhile, IEEE 802.11ah, a.k.a. Wi-Fi HaLow, is an open standard that you can download without a fee: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9363693

That is all.

Edit: fixed terminology

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[–] Cenzorrll@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Chirp spread spectrum just describes how data is sent, it can't really be proprietary. It would be like saying waving a flashlight to send morse code was proprietary. The black box part is you say "send this data" then that data comes out of the antenna in the Lora signal. The physical device that connects that data to a signal and visa-versa is what's proprietary. There could be little tweaks to the transmission that make it work better, like having a slightly non-linear chirp, or some signal processing algorithm that can dig the signal out of some serious noise.

For the most part, a transmission isn't proprietary, it's how that transmission is made and how it's processed that is. In the case of Lora, the radios are cheap and work incredibly well, so there isn't much of a reason for someone to homebrew their own.

[–] rah@feddit.uk 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

the radios are cheap and work incredibly well

But they're proprietary. Which is bad.

Edit: and to be clear, it's not just that the radios are proprietary black boxes, which is bad, it's also that by using them, you make it necessary for all other parties you communicate with to use matching proprietary black boxes, which is bad squared.

there isn't much of a reason for someone to homebrew their own

Especially when there's an existing, open standard for communication using the same principles.