MULTICONNECT® CONDUIT
TM
IP67 BASE STATION
6
MultiConnect
®
Conduit
TM
Base Station IP67 Getting Started Guide for Versions 1.5 and 2.1
The V2.1 design includes a GPS receiver module to provide timing synchronization between
geographically-dispersed gateways. The high-accuracy one-pulse-per-second (PPS) output from this
receiver module maintains an accurate internal 250 MHz (4 ns period) timing counter within the FPGA.
The GPS receiver and the associated high-speed counter were added specifically to enable a server-
layer application to estimate the physical location of a node based on the Time Difference-of-Arrival
(TDOA) of the same packet transmitted by the node at multiple (at least three) gateways. This TDOA
geolocation scheme works successfully, but accuracy is limited by topography and the number of
gateways providing timing information. Multi-path (reflected) signals constitute the primary challenge
for this scheme since they arrive at different times based on the different path lengths.
For this initial V2.1 release:
V2.1 hardware supports geolocation.
To get the fine timestamp for geolocation, you will need the AES keys. These can be obtained
from Semtech, which has licensed the geolocation resolver software.
Multitech supplies the chip ID that can be used by the network service providers for obtaining
the AES keys.
The packet format of the LoRa V2.1 is not backward-compatible with the LoRa V1.5 packet format. Therefore,
packet processing at the server layer (which sends/receive packets to/from LoRa gateways) fails for V2.1 packets if
the code has not been upgraded to handle them. Our MultiTech server code has not been upgraded yet, and
therefore cannot be used to process LoRa V2.1 packets. Therefore, if the customer does not have additional
server-layer support, the MultiTech LoRa V2.1 gateway can only be used as a packet forwarder. Also, unlike the
previous LoRa V1.5 packet format (and packet processing source code), this information is not publicly available.
Only LoRa operators or service providers having NDA agreements with Semtech currently have the information
required for processing V2.1 packets.
