• To give internet access to our LoRaWAN nodes, we need them to connect to a main gateway.
• IMPORTANT : Our gateway should operate on the ISM band EU433\EU868, as it is not legal to operate on other LoRaWAN ISM bands in Lebanon (such as US915).

Type-1, Carrier-grade LoRaWAN Gateways :

• These models are intended for use with large-scale, commercial systems.
• They require minimal set-up and can support large amounts of LoRaWAN nodes, but they are also the most expensive.

Type-2, Pi-Hats

• Pi-Hats modules are designed to be compatible with the GPIO interface of the Raspberry-Pi.
• There are LoRaWAN Gateway Pi-Hats models available commercially. They are not sold bundled with Raspberry-Pi boards.
• This approach would offer a good compromise between price and setup complexity.

Type-3, Full-Enclosed Raspberry-Pi systems

• Fully-Enclosed systems, containing a Raspberry-Pi board and LoRaWAN gateway module, along with additional accessories.
• Good compromise between price and setup complexity, if we account that it comes bundled with a pre-configured Raspberry-Pi board.

Type-4, Custom LoRaWAN gateway

• Cheapest option, but also the most complex.
• We could order LoRaWAN gateway modules, such as the IC880A-SPI, which has an operating frequency of 868MHz and supports 8 channels. Extensive documentation is also available online.
• We would have to tinker with the hardware, and write code to configure how the Raspberry-Pi and the module communicate using the UART \ SPI \ I2C interface.
• Guide on setting up a LoRaWAN gateway using a Raspberry-Pi and a IC880A-SPI concentrator board is available here.
• Expected total price (Raspberry-Pi + IC880A-SPI) is 170 USD.
• Open-source C code, which we could use to configure the LoRaWAN gateway module, has been made available by Semtech here. Semtech designs almost all commercially available LoRaWAN gateway modules.

Source :

The Things Network - Commercially Available LoRaWAN Gateways