How Spreading Factor affects LoRaWAN device battery life

The good old Spreading Factor, one of the key LoRaWAN characteristics that can make or break your IoT solution. We teamed up with The Things Network to explore how to find the right balance between battery performance and long-range communication.

• Compared to lower SF, sending the same amount of data with higher SF needs more transmission time. More transmission time means more energy is consumed.
• The benefit of high SF is that more extended transmission gives the receiver more opportunities to sample the signal power, which results in better sensitivity, hence better coverage.
• The optimal spreading factor that yields the lowest energy consumption is not necessarily the highest or the lowest one, but most likely somewhere in between.
• Don´t be fooled; the total energy consumption is never optimized with one parameter only.

Why read the full article? It’s packed with helpful examples, calculations and measurements on the topic. You can also download the measurement data to explore yourself.

Check out the article here.

Learn more about power optimization and meet our experts at the world’s largest LoRaWAN event in Amsterdam, on Jan 30 & 31, 2020:
The Things Conference – World’s largest LoRaWAN Conference