This is a placeholder topic for “The Things Gateway - 915Mhz Version” comments.
I believe this product should be 433Mhz for the Australian market. Is 915Mhz a cut paste error?
I thought the same but that looks like the European frequency. When I looked it up on the things network, it says 915 to 928. https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/lorawan/frequencies-by-country.html
Hi Tim,
The most commonly used LoRaWAN TTN frequencies in Australia are AU915 and AS923. If you are in Sydney AU915 is the most widely available, and if you are in Newcastle or Wollongong its AS923.
The 915-928Mhz bands are more desirable than the 433Mhz because the smaller wavelength “bounces” around better in urban environments to reach places not in direct line of sight.
Dumb question. Why is Newcastle/Wollongong using AS923 rather then AU915? What drove that decision and who was involved?
From what I have seen of hardware. Most Lora RF SOC’s seem to support 868/915 which I presume means it probably supports 923 if the SOC can be programmed for the correct radio parameters. Is there more to this then my limited knowledge?
Hi Peter,
AU915 is the Australian “standard” but because Australia is a relatively small fish in a big pond this means that there are fewer products manufactured that support this frequency. Meanwhile, AS923 is the Asian standard, and has the weight of a huge market driving competitive products that support that band.
That’s reasoning behind the different bands. As far as why they are different in Sydney vs Newcastle/Wollongong I’ll need to make an educated guess. I would think that the Sydney network has been established for quite some time, before LoRaWAN was a “household name” there was not a strong market full of products to choose from and AU915 was chosen because it is technically the standard. Because LoRaWAN benefits from all gateways in the area this band would have been the preference for all new gateways because you want the added coverage of other gateways in your area.
The networks in Newcastle and Wollongong are more recent and the decision was made taking the current market into account, and again, this continues to snowball and new gateways in these areas preference that band.
It seems to me to be a ‘the booster rockets on the space shuttle are so wide because of how wide a chariots wheels were in ancient Rome’ sort of evolution.
Thanks @Stephen. I guess its the influence of Core or Newie Ventures (or Meshed?) that is pushing AS923 being the most common supplier/installers of gateways in the area. Is NNN Co (or Sigfox) operating on AU915?
From what I have read 868/915 GHz seem to be supported by the same RF hardware (as opposed to 433 GHz) with similar antenna performance across that bandwidth.
Am I correct to assume AS923 can be supported by the same RF hardware as 868/915 so long as you can update with the correct LoRa parameters for AS923?
Hi Peter,
We here at Core support AS923 as the preferred frequency, and so does Newie Ventures. The Lake Mac and Newcastle Council recently installed a TTN gateway network that uses the same frequency as well.
I’m not sure what frequency Sigfox uses, but I think its 868 or 915.
Most RF hardware will be able to handle both 923 and 915, and the same duck antenna works for both. As long as the hardware allows you to make that configuration. The Pycom Lopy4 just requires you enter either “AU915” or “AS923” when initializing the LoRa and that’s it!
And you can get our latest projects and tips straight away by following us on:
