The LoRa Alliance a has expanded the LoRaWan standard with the addition of TS013-1.0.0, an application programming interface (API) for application payload decoder-encoders (codecs).

Adopting the specification should allow device manufacturers and application server providers to reduce deployment complexity significantly. This should make it easier and faster to deploy LoRaWan devices at a massive scale.

“LoRa Alliance members, working with their customers, identified a new opportunity to enhance ease of use,” said Donna Moore, CEO of the LoRa Alliance. “By doing the work to develop a standardised application payload codec API, we are greatly simplifying the onboarding process, making it easier to integrate and deploy devices, and thereby facilitating massive LoRaWan deployments. This new specification eliminates yet another barrier to massive IoT with a new standards-based approach.”

When using LoRaWan to transport application payloads, messages are very compactly encoded to reduce bandwidth usage. As messages reach the application server, they must be decoded to be read and processed. Previously, each device manufacturer or application developer had to write a specific codec for each device and application platform pair, which created friction for device onboarding. With the payload codec API specification, a codec can be developed once and used on any application platform, achieving savings in terms of reduced complexity and accelerated time to market.

The LoRaWan payload codec API standardises an API for the JavaScript codecs for LoRaWan devices to enable adoption by both device makers and application server vendors. A standard codec provides the capability to decode uplinks and downlinks and to encode downlinks, allowing LoRaWan devices to be easily integrated into any compatible platform.