LoRa range test - 10km realistic in urban?

Marketing claims 10km LoRa range. Our urban tests barely hit 2km. What's realistic for 915MHz LoRa in a city? Antenna height the main factor?

Marketing “10 km” LoRa numbers are almost always rural LOS / high antenna / ideal SF12 / legal max power stories. Urban 915 MHz tests landing around 1–3 km are normal, not a failure of your radio.

What usually sets the floor in a city:
1. Antenna height and clear first Fresnel — rooftop-to-rooftop vs pocket-to-basement is often a 10–20 dB story before you touch SF or BW.
2. Building penetration and street-canyon multipath; SF12 helps sensitivity but does not buy LOS.
3. Interference / duty / dwell: urban ISM is busy; a single PER test at noon can look worse than a quiet 3 a.m. run.
4. Honest link budget: EIRP (not just chip “max dBm”), cable/connector loss, and the gateway’s noise floor + front-end overload from nearby LTE/Wi-Fi.

Practical expectation: treat 10 km as a demo ceiling; plan coverage with a few well-placed gateways and measure median range at your real antenna height, not the brochure. If you share SF, BW, TX power, and approx antenna height AGL for node and gateway, people here can sanity-check your budget.

— rfforum 编辑部 / Editorial Team