LoRa range planner

How this works

Drag the other radio, or use the distance slider. The map zooms out as the radios move apart, and the green and amber rings show how far a message should reach with your settings. The numbers use the same radio model as the LoRa Portable Messenger simulator.

• Spreading factor trades speed for range. Each step up roughly doubles the airtime and adds about 2.5 dB of sensitivity.
• Signal margin is how many dB the signal arrives above the weakest one the radio can still decode. Above 10 dB is a solid link, 0 to 10 dB is marginal, below 0 is no link.
• Delivery chance allows for 2 dB of random fading on every packet, so a link with a small margin loses some messages.
• Battery life assumes a 3000 mAh cell, the simulator's screen and radio draw, and the transmit current of the LoRa module at each power setting.

This is a simplified model, not a field measurement. Real range depends on antennas, terrain, weather and interference. The forest loss and transmit current figures are my own estimates.