LoRa vs WirelessHART

Basic Overview

WirelessHART is a protocol designed specifically for industrial automation, part of the HART (Highway Addressable Remote Transducer) family. It is known for its reliability and security in industrial environments and has a typical range for dense sites of 30 meters. On the other hand, LoRa is a wireless communication technology designed for long-range, low-power communication. It's known for its wide coverage area and low energy consumption with a typical range on dense sites between 1 and 1.5 kilometers.

Key advantages of LoRa over WirelessHART

• Longer Range: LoRa offers significantly longer transmission ranges compared to WirelessHART. This makes LoRa more suitable for applications requiring wide-area coverage, such as large industrial complexes or remote monitoring.

• Lower Power Consumption: LoRa is highly optimized for low power consumption, translating to longer battery life for sensors like the NEON Vibration Sensor. This is crucial for reducing maintenance and operational costs. In practice, the difference is about 2 to 3 times longer battery life for LoRa devices.

• Scalability: LoRa networks can easily scale up to accommodate a large number of nodes, making it ideal for extensive sensor networks.

• Cost-Effectiveness: LoRa devices and network infrastructure are generally more cost-effective than those for WirelessHART, making it a more economical choice for large-scale deployments. This is mainly due to the lower infrastructure cost and the far lower amount of needed gateways.

Use Case Example

If we take a known big refinery as an example at the moment of writing they operate 7500 LoRa devices with 3 gateways. If we use the formula from Emerson Engineering Guide - IEC 62591 WirelessHART to estimate the number of gateways with a similar amount of WirelessHART sensors we would need more than 70 gateways just to support the capacity provided by 3 LoRa gateways.

Where to use WirelessHART

All control or safety-related use cases. WirelessHART is suitable for critical applications where real-time data transmission and high reliability are of utmost importance. Therefore, WirelessHART is recommended when the cost of downtime outweighs the cost of the monitoring.