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by wildzzz 811 days ago
You get added again out of a spread spectrum signal and it helps with interference too but the main issue is that with the power spread out, it's much harder to detect at long distances. It becomes even harder to detect when you don't know the spreading sequence. You may "see" some RF power in the spectrum but without knowing the chip sequence, it might as well be noise. LoRa uses a type of spread spectrum method that is even harder to detect if you aren't expecting it. There's an example of someone using it for a 100km data link for an RC plane but you know what works at an even longer range? CW, aka Morse code, at low frequencies (1-30MHz). They can wrap around the earth even at relatively low power. LoRa is nice because it's modern and you can get nice data rates that are appropriate for machine-to-machine communications but spread spectrum waveforms will never be useful when you just want any signal to go as far as possible.