What is Automated Gateway Placement and How Does It Work?

Automated Gateway Placement is a feature of the Silvanet Planning Tool that automatically calculates the optimal number and locations of gateways for your Site Plan. It analyzes the sensor areas you have defined and determines where gateways should be placed to ensure reliable LoRa coverage across the site.

Instead of placing gateways manually, the tool evaluates your planned sensor layout, terrain model, and connectivity requirements to generate an optimized mesh network design.

This feature speeds up planning, improves network reliability, and removes guesswork, particularly for larger or more complex sites.

Note: Automated Gateway Placement is designed to cover at least 85% of your planned sensor areas by default. After the automatic placement, you may still need to make final adjustments, such as adding additional Gateways or repositioning a small number of sensors, to achieve full coverage and ensure a complete, reliable network.

How Automated Gateway Placement Works

When triggered, the automated placement engine performs several tasks:

1. Analyzes Sensor Locations

It evaluates all the sensors you have already positioned on the map, identifying where connectivity is required and where coverage gaps might occur.

2. Evaluates Terrain Conditions

The tool analyzes natural terrain characteristics such as elevation, slope, and distance. This helps estimate radio reachability and determine where gateways can best communicate with sensors or other gateways.

Note: The tool cannot detect man-made structures (e.g., buildings, warehouses). These obstacles might block wireless communication even if the tool suggests the position as optimal based on terrain. In such cases, manual adjustment may be necessary.

3. It Applies Your Planning Parameters

Depending on what you choose in the sidebar, the algorithm can adapt itself:

• Site With Low Cellular Connectivity

  Select this parameter if your site is not fully covered with LTE-M or NB-IOT connectivity. If enabled, the tool tries to strengthen the mesh by adding more Mesh Gateways

• Only Within Borders

  When this option is active:

  • Gateway placement is restricted to the defined site area

  • The algorithm will not place devices outside the polygons

  • This is useful when the project area has strict boundaries or private land limitations.

• Installation height

  • 3m Standard: 700m coverage radius.
  • 5m Pole: 1.5km coverage radius.
  • 10m Tower: 3.0km coverage radius.

4. Automatically Places Gateways

Based on sensor distribution and terrain analysis, the tool proposes gateway positions to create a stable and efficient mesh network. It aims to:

• Cover all sensor locations

• Maintain required gateway-to-sensor distances

• Ensure mesh continuity

• Avoid unnecessary over-deployment

5. Optimizes the Connectivity Mesh

The system calculates the minimum number of gateways needed to deliver reliable coverage while ensuring redundancy where required. Gateway positions are chosen to support:

• Strong signal paths

• Multi-hop connectivity

• Balanced network performance

Note: The tool immediately flags any sensors that fall outside Gateway coverage. These sensors are marked with a red “connectivity blocked” icon in both the Planning Overview and on the map, making them easy to identify and correct.

Working With Constraints: Manual + Automated Placement

Many deployments involve fixed or restricted installation points, for example:

• A PoE-powered Border Gateway on a specific building

• A mast or tower that must host a gateway

• A fenced, inaccessible, or protected area

To support these real-world constraints, the Planning tool allows a hybrid workflow:

Step 1 - Place Fixed Gateways Manually

You can place gateways in locations that must remain unchanged. These manually placed gateways are treated as fixed points in the mesh design.

Step 2 - Let the Tool Complete the Mesh Automatically

After your fixed gateways are positioned, you can run Automated Gateway Placement to:

• Integrate your fixed gateway locations

• Analyze coverage gaps

• Place additional gateways only where necessary to complete and strengthen the mesh

This ensures that mandatory gateway locations are preserved while the tool handles the complexity of optimizing the rest of the network.

Why Use Automated Gateway Placement?

• Faster planning for both small and large sites

• Consistent and repeatable design logic

• Fewer manual adjustments thanks to terrain-aware optimization

• Support for real-world constraints through hybrid manual + automated placement

• Reduced hardware requirements by avoiding over-deployment

• Improved reliability through optimized mesh architecture