The Asia-Pacific region has witnessed strong growth in the use of LoRaWan technology this year, according to the LoRa Alliance.

The first six months of 2023 saw the addition of millions of sensors led by large projects in China, Japan, Korea and India.

The continued evolution of LoRaWans is also increasing accessibility, further accelerating growth. To support the high level of regional activity, the LoRa Alliance will bring its next LoRaWan Live event to Tokyo, Japan, on October 11-12, 2023.

“The Asia Pacific region has consistently been at the leading edge of LoRaWan deployments, and the trend has been accelerating through the first half of 2023,” said Donna Moore, CEO of the LoRa Alliance. “As digital transformation accelerates and demand increases for more effective, efficient and environmentally sustainable solutions to protect the planet and people’s wellbeing, LoRa Alliance members have engaged in numerous deployments in the region to support a wide variety of applications. Some of the largest scale deployments support water metering and management, gas metering and leak detection, environmental monitoring and energy management, and street lighting and safety. I’m excited for the alliance to return to Japan in October to support the region’s dynamic and accelerating LoRaWan activity.”

Recent LoRaWan projects and large-scale deployments announced in the Apac region include:

• Tata Communications has scaled two significant deployments; the first enables connected workers covering more than 250,000 end nodes to monitor health, safety and productivity across large manufacturing organisations in segments such as metals and mining, oil and gas, automotive, and pharma; and the second harnesses LoRaWan for smart lighting automation for more than 300,000 end nodes across India and the Middle East to manage streetlight infrastructure across large geographies.
• Packetworx and Actility are deploying a nationwide public LoRaWan in the Philippines with over 6000 gateways.
• Semtech is a partner in a large water metering deployment of 250,000 sensors in Korea. Leotek supplies water metering infrastructure services to major local governments in Korea using SJI LoRaWan modules.
• Milesight has completed multiple deployments across China, with approximately 50,000 LoRaWan devices deployed. Projects included: lighting control system upgrade to improve management efficiency of the site campus and reduce power consumption; digital transformation including lighting control, device control, energy and environment management, and space management, with the help of a smart building using LoRaWan to enhance working efficiency and productivity; and sustainable and productive building management with LoRaWan smart bin sensors and water leak detectors, improving operational efficiency, ensuring customer satisfaction and integrating legacy systems.
• In a LoRaWan milestone for Singapore, iWow Technology installed a network of over 400 Tektelic LoRaWan gateways to service over 25,000 sensors for smart metering and emergency response services.
• IoT Ventures is deploying more than 8000 sensors to support its LoRaWan end-to-end offering, including the Water2Milk water infrastructure and pasture growth irrigation option, HorseSafe horse wellness and GrainSure silo monitoring.
• Lacuna Space and IoT Ventures rolled out a water monitoring system to track the availability of clean drinking water captured and stored in tanks within remote communities in the South Pacific. The early warning system avoids the need for infrastructure by messaging direct from sensor to satellite, allowing authorities to take action before the situation becomes critical.
• One of the largest subway companies in Japan introduced Yokogawa Electric’s Sushi sensors to monitor hundreds of ventilators and air conditioning equipment units in its stations and tunnels. The company plans to install the sensor on all its subway lines ventilators and air conditioning equipment.
• SenRa collaborated with a large building management system (BMS) company in India to optimise and expand its LoRaWan deployment covering a 65-acre site and leveraging more than 250 sensors in the initial phases of the project to support water metering and management, leak detection, and remote monitoring. Phases planned for later this year are slated to expand into streetlighting, energy metering and parking, adding thousands of sensors.
• Kiwi Technology has launched two IoT deployments; the first supports LNG gas metering and leverages a third-party network control unit that uses LoRaWan with class B to connect and monitor gas meters in real time and potentially reduce gas leaks. The current Taiwan LPG deployment follows a similar project in Japan that went online in late 2022 and the second harnesses LoRaWan for smart temperature management across the food retail and cold chain, as well as medical logistics to manage food and pharma safety to meet HACCP and GMP regulations.
• Semtech supported Aeon Delight in equipping 90 administrative facilities in Japan with solar panel-driven LoRaWan sensors commercialised by Ricoh to measure temperature, humidity, CO₂ levels and light remotely, reducing labour and running costs.

LoRaWan Live in Tokyo will be taking place at the Hilton Tokyo Shinjuku on October 11-12, 2023. This two-day public event features keynotes, panel discussions, live demonstrations, a poster session and an innovations marketplace.

The event offers attendees the opportunity to network with global IoT leaders, CTOs, CIOs, CEOs, heads of innovation and technologists, developers, system integrators, OEMs, end-users, enterprises and start-ups.

• The global LoRa and LoRaWan IoT market is expected to reach $48.4bn by 2030, rising at a 36.8% CAGR, according to ReportLinker.