Getting Software Defined Radio (SDR) tools into the hands of the community has been great for developing and decoding previously cryptic, if not encrypted, radio signals around the world. As soon as there is a new protocol or modulation method, it is in the public eye. Many people are working on LoRa and [bertrik] at RevSpace in The Hague there is did some work of his own and put together an amazing summary of the state of the art.
LoRa is a new modulation scheme for low power radios. It’s patented, so there is information available about it. But it’s also proprietary, which means you need a license to manufacture a radio that uses the encoding. In keeping with today’s buzzwords, LoRa is being marketed as a wide-area network for the Internet of Things. HopeRF makes a LoRa module that is relatively affordable and natural [bertrik] already has wrote an Arduino library for its use.
So with a LoRa radio in hand and a $15 RTL-SDR dongle connected to a laptop, [bertrik] got some footage, converted the FM-modulated chirping to audio, and did a bunch of hand analysis. He confirmed that an existing plugin for sdrangelove they did (mostly) what they were supposed to, and he wrote it all up, along with a fantastic set of links.
There’s still work to be done, so if you’re interested in hacking LoRa or just peeking under the hood of this new modulation scheme, you’re off to a great start.
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