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RN2483 LoRa Module Report on Range Test carried out
at @iLabAfrica on Friday 10th
, June 2016.
The tests were done by:
1.Reha Yurdakul
2.Kevin Mwega
3. Leonard Mabele
Abbreviations:
DFU: Device Firmware upgrade
UART: Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter
ADC: Analog to Digital Converter
GPIO: General Purpose Input/Output
FSK: Frequency Shift Keying
SNR: Signal to Noise ratio
ASCII: American Standard Code for Information Interchange
dB: decibels
rx: receive
tx: transmitt

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Introduction
The RN2483 is a low-power long range transceiver module based on wireless LoRa Technology. It
utilizes unique spread spectrum modulation within the sub-GHz band to enable long range, low power
and high network capacity. The low power performance capability of the RN2483 provides a longer
battery life enhancing the ability of this small device to connect millions of wireless sensor nodes to
Lora gateways and IoT-connected Cloud Servers.
This module complies with the LoRaWAN Class A protocol specifications. It integrates RF, a
baseband controller, command Application Programming Interface (API) processor that is easy to
configure via simple ASCII commands through the UART, making it a complete long range Solution.
LoRaWAN networks are laid out in a star topology in which gateways relay messages between end-
devices and a central network server at the backend. Gateways are connected to the network server via
standard IP connections while end-devices use single-hop LoRa communication to one or many
gateways. All communication is generally bi-directional, although uplink communication from an
end-device to the network server is expected to be the predominant traffic.
All LoRaWAN devices implement at least the Class A functionality. Devices implementing more than
Class A are described as “higher Class end-devices”. End-devices of Class A allow for bi-directional
communications whereby each end-device’s uplink transmission is followed by two short downlink
receive windows. Class A operation is the lowest power end-device system for applications that only
require downlink communication from the server shortly after the end-device has sent an uplink
transmission. RN248 handles this protocol between the configured end-devices where a host MCU
reads a sensor and commands this module to transmit the sensor reading over the LoRa network.
The RN2483 is described as having the following features:
1. Long range: greater than 15km
2. Low power consumption for 10+ year battery life
3. Operates in 433MHz and 868MHz bands
4. Embedded LoRaWAN Class A protocol
5. Easy to use ASCII command interface over UART
6. Supply voltage: 2.1-3.6V
7. Temperature range: -40°C to 85°C
8. Adjustable output power up to +14 dBm
9. High receiver sensitivity down to -148 dBm
10. Device Firmware Upgrade (DFU) over UART
11. 14 GPIO for control, status and ADC
12. Excellent interference immunity
13. Secure AES-128 encryption

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Experiment Description
From the foregoing description of the LoRa RN2483 module features, the following team of three
members carried out an experiment on the communication strength and reliability of two RN2483
modules positioned at varying distances:
1) Reha Yardakul – IBM
2) Kevin Mwega – IBM
3) Leonard Mabele – @iLabAfrica
Two notebooks and two RN2483 modules were used in this experiment. One module was connected
to one notebook and left stationary in the IoT Room on 5th
Floor at @iBizAfrica while the other
module was connected to the second notebook whose position was being shifted in three locations per
floor from 5th
Floor to the Ground floor.
This experiment was being carried out to prove the reliability of the RN2483 in Long range
communication (Feature 1 above) and the strength of communication between the two modules at
the set output powers (Feature 8 above).
The Arduino Serial command/response interface was used in this experiment. The commands used for
the module were radio commands. The following radio commands were first used to determine the
LoRa signal status of the two modules:
radio get mod - reads if module is modulating in LoRa or FSK
radio get freq - reads back the current frequency the transceiver communicates on
radio get pwr - reads back the current transmit output power
radio get sf - reads back the current spreading factor settings
radio get afcbw - reads back the current automatic frequency correction bandwidth
radio get rxbw - reads back the receive signal bandwidth
radio get bitrate - reads back the current FSK bit rate setting
radio get wdt -reads back the current time-out value applied to the watchdog Timer
radio get bw -reads back the current operational bandwidth applied to transmissions
radio get snr -reads back the measured SNR for the previous packet reception
Most of the outputs of the following commands were similar for the two modules.
The following two commands were used during testing of the communication capability of the two
modules:
radio rx - this command configures the radio to receive simple radio packets
radio tx - this command configures a simple radio packet transmission
The radio rx command is appended with a space and a zero (i.e. radio rx 0) to put the radio into
continuous receive mode.
The mac pause command was first used before radio rx and radio tx commands to initiate the module into
transmission and reception mode.

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The following command was used to adjust the output power whenever communication failed or
uncertainty of transmission-reception occurred to determine the best stable output power for
successful transmission and reception of the send data. This was being done if the new shifted
position by the second RN2483 module could not result to successful communication.
radio set pwr <value>
Experiment Results
The following are the findings of this experiment. The results are tabulated using the following
criteria:
 The Floor Number column indicates the floor on which the second RN2483 module was
placed in a descending order i.e. starting from 5th
floor.
 The position column indicates the points visited on each floor i.e. 1st
, 2nd
and 3rd
position.
 The Output power column indicates the operating range of power from 0 to +14dB
FloorNumber Position 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
5th 1 ✓
2 ✓
3 ✓
4th 1 ✓
2 ✓
3 ✓
3rd 1 X X X — — ✓
2 X X X X X ✓
3 X X X X X ✓
2nd 1 X X X X X ✓
2 X X X X X — — ✓
3 X X X X X X — ✓
1st 1 ✓
2 ✓
3 ✓
GF 1 X X X X X X X ✓ — — ✓
2 X X X X X X X — ✓ ✓
3 X X X X X X X X X X X X X X ✓
Output Power(In Decibels)

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From this table:
 A tick (✓) shows successful communication between the two modules at the given
power output.
 A dash (—) shows an uncertainty in the communication between the two modules; a
probability of successful communication exists in this case
 A cross (x) shows non-successful communication between the two modules
Conclusions
From the foregoing results of this experiment, the following are the conclusions made from
my observation:
1. The RN2483 module performance depends largely on output power irrespective of the
bandwidth at varied distances.
2. Communication between two modules of RN2483 at 0 dB is successful as long as the
modules are closer to each other i.e.at a distance of approximately 100 meters and
with few obstacles between them. Take the observation of the three points of 5th
floor
and 4th
floor from the table above.
3. The longer the distance between the two modules, the larger the output power
required for successful communication.
4. The RN2483 is susceptible to attenuation especially if the distance is at different
heights
5. The fact that RN2483 implements class A of the LoRaWAN protocol, makes it a
suitable low power communication device between two end-points. Hence, it is best
used between two MCUs or a notebook and an MCU. For gateway construction,
RN2483 is not the best device to be used due to class B and C feature deficiency.
6. To avoid distortion in performance for varied distances, a power output threshold of
14dB is best.
7. Antenna design is a key consideration when setting up two RN2483 modules for
stable radio transmission and reception. The antenna should be made firm and facing
up like in the stationary RN2483 module used in this experiment.

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Recommendations:
 The two modules should be tested with both of them at an elevated height we
get to determine the distance they can successfully communicate at 0dB power
and 14dB power. This is to enable us come up with the best position to place
them for the best stable and reliable data transmission at a reduced distortion
level in a production environment.
 Next time, we try to adjust the frequency and bandwidth levels to get different
deductions on how the RN2483 gets to perform with these factors varied.
References:
 RN2483 LoRa Technology Command Reference User’s Guide by Microchip
 Microchip documentation of RN2483 Low-power Long Range Technology
Transceiver Module
 LoRaWAN Specification Document by N. Somin(Semtech), M. Luis(Semtech), T.
Eirich(IBM), T. Kramp(IBM) and O. Hersent(Actility).