Setting Custom Channel Masks

In the US915/AU915 LoRaWAN Specification, channel masks are sent to LoRaWAN sensors by the Network Server to inform the sensor of what channels the sensor should transmit it's uplink packets on. These channel masks can be applied on an application level (to all sensors within an application on Tektelic Network Server), or on a device by device basis. This can be selected by selecting (or not selecting) the "Use application settings" box when onboarding your device to the Tektelic Network Server, as seen below:

A mismatch between the channels that the sensor is sending on, and the channels that the LoRa gateway is listening to is the most common reason for sensor packet loss. This article will cover how to correctly set the channel masks for your devices in the Tektelic NS.

Default Options for Device Channel Mask: 

In the "Advanced Network Settings" Tab for either your application or device, scroll down until you see a field labeled "Default Channel Mask". By default it will show as "Not defined" and have the following options:

"64-Channel" tells the sensor/application to use all 64 (125 KHz channels) + 8 (500KHz channels) of the US915 /AU915 LoRa spectrum. This channel mask should only be used if your sensors are using a 64 channel gateway such as the Kona Mega.

"8-Channel" tells the sensor/application to use the first 8 (125 KHz channels) + 1 (500KHz channel) of the US915 spectrum. This channel mask should be used if your sensors are using a 8 channel gateway such as the Kona Micro.

"Custom channel mask" allows you to set your own channel mask to be used for sensor communications with 16 Channel gateways such as the Kona Macro, or to specify different sub-bands of the US915 or AU915 spectrum if your gateway is configured to not use the first 8 channels of the spectrum. Setting these will be covered in the next section.

Setting Custom Channel Masks:

Once you have selected "Custom Channel Mask" field shown above, you will want to click the button "+ Add" , to allow you to specify the desired channel mask as seen below:

Now you can specify the channel mask for your sensors using the below entries: 

Kona Micro: 

Kona Macro: