QUESTION: Why is Star-on-Star the Preferred Network Topology for High-Density Meteorological Sensor Networks?

ANSWER: Affordability resulting from simpler wireless hardware designs enables budgetary constraints to be more easily met with a Star-on-Star wireless sensor network topology while preserving the high reliability of mesh network topology. Since sensor nodes are not registered or tied to individual LoRaWAN gateways, it allows nodes to transmit packets to the network server via any gateway that is close enough to receive their data. Thereby network redundancy and capacity can be tailored to the budgetary requirements of each project and a large number of sensor nodes can be affordably installed. Each node is cheaper and has lower power requirements since it does not have to act as a gateway to relay messages of nearby nodes.

Benefits in practice

The following figures demonstrate how the addition of a secondary gateways can improve data reliability of meteorological sensor networks.

• Red arrow 1 shows when an additional gateway was installed. Data reliability increased from about 10% to 95%.

• Red arrow 2 shows the installation of a third gateway resulting in 100% reception rate of sensor packets from this remote weather station installation.