Appendix A. Building a LoRaWAN network
The home digital twin used throughout this book is built on LoRaWAN sensors. While technologies such as Zigbee and platforms like Home Assistant are excellent choices for home automation, I selected LoRaWAN because the same architecture and design patterns scale naturally beyond the home, to industrial, agricultural, and city-scale digital twins. This appendix focuses on building a private LoRaWAN network that mirrors how real-world digital twin deployments are designed and operated.
Figure A.1 shows the end-to-end architecture, which leverages managed cloud services to scale from a handful of sensors to hundreds of devices.
Figure A.1 LoRaWAN network architecture using a managed network server within AWS.
A.1 What you’ll need
Setting up your own LoRaWAN network can be accomplished quickly by acquiring the following key components, allowing you to establish a robust foundation that can scale from a handful of sensors to hundreds of devices across your deployment area.
A.1.1 LoRaWAN gateway
A gateway bridges your sensors and the internet, receiving LoRa radio signals and forwarding data to a network server via HTTPS. If you live within coverage of The Things Network (TTN), you may be able to use a community gateway. Otherwise, I recommend the Dragino LPS8N indoor gateway (~$150).