The LoRa Alliance announced the release of Regional Parameters RP2-1.0.2, which includes support for all versions of the LoRaWAN Layer 2 Specification. Support of LoRaWAN operation in Senegal, Montserrat, Mali, Guinea, Syria, and Vanuatu has been identified, with the RP now supporting more than 200 countries and regions globally.

One major change to the Regional Parameters is the addition of support for new Long Range – Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (LR-FHSS) data rates for the EU868, US915, and AU915 regions. The use of LR-FHSS data rates is optional and so preserves backward compatibility with all previous revisions of the Regional Parameters Specification.

LoRaWAN’s excellent low power consumption is maintained with the LR-FHSS rates, while network capacity is significantly increased in certain scenarios compared to standard data rates, allowing greatly increased scale on the same network footprint. Additionally, deployment and management costs of networks will decrease because of this new capability, since not as many gateways are needed. The new rates feature high interference resistance and high spectral efficiency to achieve an increase in network capacity. They are used for uplink only, standard data rates remain in use for the downlink.