Why Gateway Choice Matters for Reliable LoRaWAN® Network in Harsh Environments

When you’re designing a LoRaWAN® network, it’s easy to focus on range and coverage — drawing circles on a map, checking signal strength, estimating how many gateways you need. But here’s a reality we’ve seen again and again:

Coverage alone doesn’t guarantee a reliable network.

It’s not just about whether the signal reaches — it’s about whether the signal stays strong, stable, and clear, especially in difficult, noisy, or remote environments.

You may be deploying in areas where:

• Powerful 4G/5G base stations are nearby
• Equipment is exposed to lightning, dust, heat, or extreme cold
• There’s no one on-site to check or reset a gateway if something goes wrong

In these situations, the gateway becomes your single point of failure — unless it’s designed to handle the environment, not just ideal lab conditions.

At TEKTELIC, we’ve worked with hundreds of customers facing these exact challenges. And we’ve seen where most deployments go wrong: the hardware wasn’t made for the job. In this article, we’ll walk through what makes a gateway truly reliable — and why choosing the right one can save you from costly disruptions later on.

Why Most Gateways Struggle in Real-World Conditions

On paper, many LoRaWAN® gateways claim good performance. And in small pilot setups — a few devices in a parking lot or office — they usually deliver. But once the deployment moves to larger, outdoor, or interference-heavy areas, things often start to break down.

Here’s where common market gateways begin to fall short:

1. Interference from Nearby RF Sources

When a gateway is placed near high-power transmitters like 4G/5G base stations, broadcast antennas, or microwave radios, it’s exposed to significant RF noise. Gateways without proper RF filtering and signal rejection capabilities often suffer from:

• Dropped packets

• Unstable connections

• Poor packet success rates across the network

These are hard to detect during planning — but they become a major issue in day-to-day operations.

2. No Protection from Electrical or Environmental Stress

Gateways that lack built-in surge protection or ESD shielding are at risk in outdoor deployments. Lightning storms, sudden power surges, or even nearby electrical equipment can damage internal components. Some vendors rely on external add-ons for this protection, which can be overlooked during installation — or fail in the field.

3. Inadequate Housing and Build Quality

Plastic housings or indoor-rated enclosures are simply not made to withstand prolonged exposure to dust, rain, heat, or sub-zero temperatures. In remote or unmanned locations, a failed enclosure often means moisture inside the device, unstable power supply, or total gateway failure — with no one around to fix it.

In these real-world conditions, you can’t rely on lab specs alone. Reliability isn’t a feature you can enable later — it needs to be designed into the gateway from the very beginning.

When the network environment is unpredictable, the gateway must be predictable.

Why KONA Macro Was Built for These Challenges

At TEKTELIC, we’ve supported hundreds of large-scale deployments where coverage alone wasn’t enough — the network had to perform consistently, even in tough conditions. That’s why we created the KONA Macro Gateway with a very specific goal: to stay reliable where others drop off.

Here’s what makes it different:

• Built-in RF Cavity Filters to block out interference from nearby high-power antennas (3G, 4G, 5G, microwave radios)
• Integrated Lightning and Surge Protection — no external components required
• Industrial-grade IP67 Enclosure for long-term deployment in any weather
• Optimized Radio Performance that maintains strong LoRaWAN® links in noisy RF environments
• Designed for telecom towers, rooftops, and remote sites, where resilience is non-negotiable

Other gateways on the market often need external accessories to handle these conditions — which adds complexity, cost, and failure points. With the KONA Macro, it’s all built in.

A Real Example: When Interference is Inevitable

We often work with customers who need to colocate LoRaWAN® gateways near telecom infrastructure — either due to tower-sharing, space constraints, or access to power and backhaul.

This seems convenient — until they discover that high-power antennas nearby flood the RF environment with noise. In these cases, typical gateways can’t keep up. Even if they work fine in smaller pilot tests, they start failing once deployed near real-world interference.

That’s where the KONA Macro consistently proves its value. It’s not just about signal range — it’s about signal integrity. And that’s the difference between a network that works on paper, and one that works in practice.

Real-World Success Stories: Why Gateway Choice Matters

In large-scale, real-life deployments, network reliability always comes down to the quality of the gateway. These three success stories show how TEKTELIC’s KONA Macro provided dependable, interference-resistant connectivity where it was most needed — and where other gateways often fail.

Deployment in Gradiska, Bosnia & Herzegovina

Challenge: Gradiska lacked a smart lighting control system. Its outdated setup led to high operational costs and no remote management.
Gateway Advantage: The city deployed TEKTELIC’s KONA Macro gateways to establish a strong, citywide LoRaWAN® backbone. Chosen for their rugged outdoor performance and stable RF operation, the gateways ensured uninterrupted connectivity for every streetlight — even in areas with environmental noise or limited infrastructure.
Value Delivered: Reliable network coverage enabled real-time lighting control, reduced maintenance costs, and supported the city’s smart urban development goals.

Read a full story of success 

Deployment in Palermo, Italy

Challenge: A large-scale water metering project covering over 145,000 users required consistent connectivity across urban and remote areas, with minimal downtime and long lifecycle support.
Gateway Advantage: TEKTELIC’s KONA Macro and KONA Enterprise gateways were selected specifically for their carrier-grade reliability and strong signal performance, even in dense metropolitan zones. The built-in RF filtering and high rejection of interference made them ideal for deployment across Palermo’s mixed environments.
Value Delivered: With fewer gateways, the network achieved full coverage, reduced yearly operating costs, and enabled smart metering with real-time insights and leak detection.

Read a full story of success

Deployment in Czech Republic (Nationwide)

Challenge: CRA needed to build a nationwide LoRaWAN® network capable of operating in varied terrains, near telecom infrastructure, and under extreme weather conditions.
Gateway Advantage: The KONA Macro was chosen for its exceptional RF stability, integrated surge protection, and proven performance near high-power cellular equipment. Its wide temperature range and rugged housing made it suitable for virtually any deployment scenario.
Value Delivered: CRA achieved over 80% national coverage with fewer gateway sites, enabling a wide range of IoT use cases from water metering to smart waste management — all supported by a highly stable and scalable LoRaWAN® backbone.

Read a full story of success

Redundancy Also Needs the Right Hardware

Some customers try to solve reliability issues by installing extra gateways — but when the hardware can’t handle the environment, even redundancy fails.

We help our customers design true backup coverage by:

• Placing gateways in separate, RF-optimized locations
• Using hardware that can withstand harsh environments for long periods
• Ensuring devices can still connect if one gateway goes offline due to power or interference

And again, this planning only works when the hardware can actually handle the location. That’s why we always start with understanding the real deployment area, not just the project specs.

How We Support You from the Start

At TEKTELIC, we know that a successful LoRaWAN® deployment doesn’t begin with hardware — it begins with understanding your real-world challenges.

Before we talk about products, we take the time to learn about your goals, your environment, and the conditions your network will face. Whether you’re deploying on a telecom tower, in an industrial zone, or across a rural landscape, we’ve worked on similar projects and know what matters most.

Here’s how we support you early in the process:

• We analyze your deployment environment

We don’t offer generic suggestions. We assess the exact deployment area — the layout, elevation, nearby RF sources, and potential interference. Our team uses RF planning tools and mapping to identify how signal will behave in that space. This ensures you don’t waste time or resources installing gateways where they won’t perform.

• We guide you to the right gateway

Different environments require different gateway capabilities. We help you select a model that matches your conditions — whether it’s harsh weather, nearby cellular infrastructure, or long-range rural coverage. If you need extra protection or filtering, we point that out before it’s a problem.

• We help you design smart redundancy

Redundancy is more than placing two gateways near each other. We help plan strategic placement that actually improves coverage resilience. This ensures your devices stay connected even if one gateway goes offline — without overbuilding the network.

• We help you avoid costly mistakes

Revisiting sites, troubleshooting outages, or replacing underperforming equipment eats into your budget. We help avoid those situations by getting the design right from the start. That includes where to install, what gateway to use, and how to support long-term performance.

And we offer this guidance before any purchase is made.

Because for us, this isn’t about selling a product — it’s about building a reliable network that works for years to come. When your deployment succeeds, that’s a win for everyone involved.

Conclusion

If you’re deploying LoRaWAN® in a challenging environment, choosing the right gateway matters more than you think.

At TEKTELIC, we designed our LoRaWAN® Network Solutions for exactly these conditions — to help you avoid downtime, minimize interference, and deliver consistent network performance, even in the most demanding locations.

And we’ll work with you to make sure your deployment is planned with clarity and confidence.

Want to talk through your project and choose the best LoRaWAN® Network Solution?
Reach out to us at info@tektelic.com — we’re here to help.