Ranging Capabilities of LoRa 2.4 GHz

Ranging is the act of measuring distance between two points. In this project, the aim was to determine the ranging capabilities of LoRa 2.4GHz and the optimal settings for the SX1280 transceiver, depending on the distance. This was done by carrying out three experiments. The first experiment was testing the number of ranging requests per packet. The study found that a higher number of requests yielded better results, although with diminishing returns. Thus, 100 requests per exchange were used for additional experiments. The second experiment tested the settings recommended by Semtech. It was found that the recommended settings, bandwidth 1.6MHz and spreading factor 6, could provide good ranging measurements at distances from 0-400m. The aim of the third and final experiment was to determine the optimal settings for ranging at different distances. It was found that the highest reliable bandwidth at a given distance combined with the lowest, reliable spreading factor, would be the optimal settings at a given distance. It was also discovered that the longest reliable range was somewhere between 1700m and 2500m. Therefore it is not recommended to use the SX1280 transceivers at distances above 1.7km with the transceiver configuration used in these experiments. It was found that LoRa SX1280 transceivers could accurately measure distances up to 1.7km with a difference in accuracy to the ground truth of at most 0.6 %.