How to Evaluate LoRaWAN Coverage for Your Deployment

The vendor’s coverage map shows a neat circle around the gateway—15 kilometers of reliable coverage, they claim. Why are half your sensors dropping packets from 200 meters away inside the warehouse?

This gap between marketing claims and deployment reality kills more LoRaWAN projects than any technical limitation. The technology genuinely can achieve multi-kilometer range, but that spec assumes flat terrain, clear line of sight, and outdoor conditions that rarely match your actual environment. Operations managers who skip coverage validation routinely face costly redeployments, coverage gaps in critical areas, and the uncomfortable conversation about why the “simple” IoT project is now three months behind schedule and over budget.

The good news: validating coverage before you commit to hardware is straightforward and inexpensive. A systematic site survey process, using equipment costing under $200, can prevent the mistakes that derail deployments. Here’s how to do it right.

Why a LoRaWAN Coverage Map Is Just Your Starting Point

Public and vendor coverage maps serve a purpose: they show where network infrastructure exists and provide theoretical range estimates. But they’re built on assumptions that may not apply to your deployment.

Most coverage maps assume outdoor, relatively unobstructed conditions. They can’t account for your specific building materials, the metal racking in your warehouse, or the RF interference from equipment that runs during business hours. They show average conditions, not worst-case scenarios. Your devices need to work reliably in worst-case scenarios.

The variables that actually determine your coverage include:

• Terrain and obstructions between devices and gateways
• Building materials that absorb or reflect radio signals
• Gateway density and placement in your area
• Local interference from other equipment or networks
• Antenna positioning at both gateway and device

Here’s the critical distinction: outdoor coverage and indoor coverage are fundamentally different problems. A gateway that covers a 5-kilometer radius outdoors might struggle to reach devices 50 meters away inside a metal building. The coverage map can’t tell you which situation you’re dealing with.

Site surveys bridge this gap. They replace assumptions with measurements specific to your environment.

Indoor vs. Outdoor: Two Different Coverage Problems

Understanding your environment type shapes everything about your evaluation approach.

Outdoor deployments contend with line-of-sight issues, terrain variations, and environmental factors. Hills, dense foliage, and other buildings create shadow zones where signals weaken or disappear. Weather impacts performance: heavy rain can reduce range by 10-20%. But outdoor signals generally behave predictably. Double the distance, lose a predictable amount of signal strength.

Indoor deployments follow different rules entirely. Building materials don’t just reduce signal strength; they can create unpredictable dead zones and reflection patterns. The same floor might have excellent coverage near windows and complete blackouts near the elevator shaft.

Here’s what different materials do to LoRaWAN signals:

The practical rule: expect indoor range to be roughly one-tenth of outdoor range when signals must penetrate typical commercial building materials. A metal warehouse or concrete structure can reduce that further, sometimes to one-twentieth or less.

This is why coverage maps mislead: they show what’s possible outdoors while your sensors sit inside a concrete building behind metal shelving.

How to Conduct a LoRa Site Survey

A systematic survey process takes half a day for most facilities and prevents weeks of troubleshooting later. Here’s the step-by-step approach.

Step 1: Define Coverage Requirements

Before testing anything, document what “success” looks like:

• Map all planned device locations. Mark them on a floor plan or site map. Include elevation if devices will be mounted at different heights.
• Categorize by priority. Which locations are critical for your use case? Which are nice-to-have? This helps you make tradeoffs later.
• Identify potential obstacles. Note metal structures, concrete walls, elevator shafts, HVAC equipment, and anything else that might block signals.
• Document operational variables. Will the space contain inventory, vehicles, or equipment that isn’t present during your survey? An empty warehouse tests very differently than a full one.

Step 2: Gather Test Equipment

You don’t need expensive RF analysis gear. Basic survey equipment includes:

• Test nodes: LoRa field testers or inexpensive development boards that transmit packets and log signal quality. Several options exist under $50.
• Gateway: Either your planned production gateway or a temporary unit with known, documented configuration.
• Mobile device or laptop: For logging results and mapping coverage as you walk the site.
• Notepad and floor plans: Sometimes low-tech documentation works best.

Total cost for basic survey equipment: $100-300, most of which is reusable for future projects.

Step 3: Establish Baseline Measurements

Before testing problem areas, establish what “good” looks like in your environment:

1. Place your gateway in the proposed mounting location, at the actual height it will be installed, not on a desk.
2. Take readings at known distances in clear conditions (line of sight, minimal obstructions).
3. Document RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) and SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio) at each point.

This baseline tells you what performance to expect before building materials and obstacles come into play. If your baseline numbers are already marginal, you’ll know gateway placement needs adjustment before testing further.

Step 4: Test Actual Deployment Locations

Walk the test node to each planned sensor location:

• Test every critical location. Don’t assume two nearby spots will have similar coverage. One might be behind an obstruction.
• Hold the test device at the planned mounting height. Coverage at floor level differs from coverage at ceiling height.
• Test during realistic conditions. If your facility has heavy equipment that runs during business hours, test during business hours. RF interference from motors and electronics is real.
• Spend extra time on problem areas. Locations near metal structures, inside enclosed rooms, or in basements deserve multiple test points.

Record RSSI and SNR at each location, along with notes about anything unusual.

Step 5: Document and Map Results

Your survey data is only useful if you can reference it later:

• Create a coverage heat map. Mark each test point on your floor plan with the measured signal quality. Color-coding (green/yellow/red) makes patterns obvious.
• Note dead zones explicitly. Mark areas with no usable coverage. These need gateway repositioning or additional gateways.
• Calculate coverage margin. Compare your measurements against your devices’ minimum requirements. If a sensor needs -120 dBm to function and you’re measuring -115 dBm, you have only 5 dB of margin. That’s not enough.

Making Sense of Your Numbers

Survey data means nothing without interpretation. Here’s how to translate measurements into decisions.

RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) measures raw signal power. For LoRaWAN devices, typical thresholds are:

• Better than -100 dBm: Excellent; reliable coverage with good margin
• -100 to -110 dBm: Good; should work reliably under normal conditions
• -110 to -120 dBm: Marginal; may drop packets during adverse conditions
• Worse than -120 dBm: Poor; expect reliability problems

SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio) indicates signal quality relative to background noise. Positive values are good; negative values mean you’re approaching the limits of what LoRa modulation can decode.

Build in margin. Areas with marginal coverage during your survey will fail during adverse conditions: when the warehouse is full of inventory, when it’s raining, when someone parks a forklift in the wrong spot. Aim for coverage 10-15 dB better than your minimum threshold.

Decision framework when coverage falls short:

1. Reposition the gateway if dead zones are localized and repositioning could provide line-of-sight
2. Add gateways if the facility simply requires more coverage points than one gateway can provide
3. Reconsider LoRaWAN if building materials make RF propagation impractical throughout the space (some metal buildings are genuinely hostile to any wireless technology)

Mistakes That Undermine Good Survey Data

Surveys fail to predict real-world performance when they don’t reflect real-world conditions:

• Testing empty spaces. A warehouse survey conducted before inventory arrives will show better coverage than you’ll actually get. If possible, test with realistic contents in place.
• Ignoring gateway mounting height. Testing with the gateway on a desk when it will be ceiling-mounted produces misleading results. Elevating gateways typically improves coverage significantly.
• Assuming symmetrical coverage. Test signal strength at the device location with the gateway in position, not just proximity between the two. Antenna orientation matters.
• Single-condition testing. If interference sources vary (equipment that cycles, vehicles that come and go), test during different operational periods.
• Skipping documentation. You’ll forget which test point showed that weird signal drop. Write everything down.

Building Coverage Validation Into Your Process

Site surveys aren’t overhead. They’re insurance against the most common LoRaWAN deployment failure mode. The cost of a half-day survey and $200 in test equipment is trivial compared to redeploying sensors, adding unplanned gateways, or explaining to stakeholders why the project timeline doubled.

Make coverage validation a standard gate before any hardware purchase. Document your findings in a format you can reference during deployment and share with whoever installs the equipment. When coverage questions arise later, and they will, you’ll have data instead of assumptions.

The vendor’s coverage map showed 15 kilometers. Your survey showed 200 meters inside the warehouse. Both numbers are accurate; only one matters for your deployment.

Hubble’s satellite-connected sensors bypass terrestrial coverage constraints entirely—no gateways, no site surveys, no RF surprises. See how it works →