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helium / router

router combines a LoRaWAN Network Server with an API for console, and provides a proxy to the Helium blockchain
Apache License 2.0
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Support AU915 Sub-Band 1 in Brazil #788

Open mikev opened 2 years ago

mikev commented 2 years ago

Brazil uses AU915 however it is standard practice in Brazil to use AU915's Sub-Band 1. Helium currently uses Sub-Band 2 for all AU915 plans.

Using Sub-Band 2 causes very poor performance and instability because there are 8 Sub-Band and therefore only 1/8 probability to Join on the proper Sub-Band. This is a known weakness of fixed frequency plans, i.e. AU915 and US915. If the Sub-Band is pre-known by the end-device then it can optimize the Join connection.

Market forces have made AU915 Sub-Band 1 the most common choice in Brazil, specifically everynet defines this plan as "LA915". This feature is required to support a Helium customer in Brazil.

Notes from customer:

We have already tested it (Helium Sub-Band 2), but we are open to strengthen it. Using an Everynet compatible device (CHE=1) in Helium console, the communication was very unstable. Giving a picture of it, I used a sensor sending messages every 20 minutes, but the console has shown the messages once in a while. When I programmed the sensor to CHE=2 (Helium's channels), I had no packet losses.

Tasks

Note - sequencing this into Production may be tricky. Because current device usage in AU915 is very low one solution might be to just deploy everything in as close as possible in real-time. That way any disruption is limited.

mikev commented 2 years ago

The current plan is to switch our AU915 from sub-band 2 to sub-band 1. This change is blocked and waiting for https://github.com/helium/miner/issues/1791 to complete.