# LoRa Enabled Smart Inverters for Microgrid Scenarios with Widespread Elements
## 3 LoRaWAN Specifications and Applications
### Review of LoRaWAN and LoRa Applications in Smart Systems  
The most notable characteristic of LoRaWAN is the long-range capability of its physical layer proprietary technology, LoRa. Low-power consumption and low implementation and operational expenses are the other advantages that LoRaWAN may offer. On the other hand, LoRaWAN can be considered as an asymmetrical communication system. In other words, the uplink transmission numbers are far greater than the downlink traffic so the end-nodes can be very simple and low power. All the medium access complications are structured on the gateways [27]. Furthermore, the channel bandwidths are mostly only 125 kHz. Comparing with the channel capacities in the range of several MHz for short-range protocols, such as different versions of IEEE 802.11 standard and about tens of MHz for long-term evaluation (LTE) cellular protocol, the narrowband characteristic of LoRa can be observed. This fact contributes directly to lower throughput of LoRa [28]. Considering the specifications of LoRaWAN, one can conclude that this type of communication structure is suitable for wireless sensor networks (WSN), with a scale of a maximum of several kilometers, where cellular networks are either not available or not justifiable to use. In [29], LoRaWAN was used to create a sailing monitoring system that transmits the real-time wind and current measurements from a sailing boat to the control station. In this research, the usage of LoRaWAN was justified because the cellular coverage may weaken when a boat distances from the shore. A health monitoring system, which transmits blood pressure and glucose level of patients to a medical center was proposed in [30]. In this case, the possibility of cellular signal degradation or unavailability was \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c} \hline \hline  & **Band** & **Channel Width** & **Modulation** & **Coverage** & **Bit Rate** \\ \hline SigFox & 868 MHz(EU), 902 MHz(US)-SM & 100 Hz(UL), 15 kHz(DL) & UNB-DRPSK(UL) & 10 km (urban) & 100 bps (UL), 40 km (rural) & 100 bps (UL) \\ LoRaWAN & 868 MHz(EU), 915 MHz(US)-ISM & 125, 250 kHz & 100 kHz & LoRa-CSS & 1–2 km (urban) & MAX 50 kbps \\ Dash7 & 433/868/915 MHz-ISM & 25 or 200 kHz & (2)GFSK & 1–2 km & MAX 150 kbps \\ Ingenu & 2.4 GHz–ISM & 1 MHz & RFMA-DSSS & 15 km (urban) & 624 kbps (UL) & 156 kbps (DL) \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Technical characteristics of selected LPWAN technologies. mentioned to justify the utilization of LoRaWAN. Another study [31], proposed a communication structure for the remote screening of urinary infections by using LoRaWAN for areas that cellular signal qualities may not suffice the application requirements. Smart city applications such as smart parking, smart waste management, air quality improvement, and smart traffic-lights control are some scenarios, among many more, which open other potential scopes to employ LoRaWAN communication systems [25; 32]. As another example, a vehicle identifier system based on LoRaWAN was proposed in [33]. LoRaWAN can also be used for monitoring and data acquiring in smart agriculture applications [34; 35]. Apart from long-range and low-power scenarios, LoRaWAN has also been tested for indoor applications. For example, in [27], a system for monitoring the well-being of personnel in a workplace by using an SX1272 LoRa transceiver was proposed. Several studies can be found in the existing literature that tackle the problem of LoRa/LoRaWAN implementation in smart grid applications. In [36], a LoRaWAN-based communication infrastructure for monitoring and coordination of smart grid elements, such as distributed generators (DGs) and energy storage systems (ESSs), was proposed. This study implements a class B LoRaWAN system, and its performance was evaluated in terms of latency, coverage, and scalability. Following this interesting study, another publication proposed a similar communication system for implementing interface protection systems (IPSs) in MG or smart grid architectures.