Can a module be used as a gateway?

A module cannot be used as a LoRaWAN gateway. There are special chips that are being used for LoRaWAN gateways that are different from chips used in LoRaWAN modules. These chips are able to sense different frequencies, channels, scaling factors, have more power, can communicate to more devices and have interface to the internet.

There are people that do make/use single channel “LoRaWAN” gateways with other modules, but it practice, that is not LoRaWAN, because for true LoRaWAN you need access to multiple channels. These gateways are not secure and should not be used for commercial use, only maybe hobby use.

A module could be used as a LoRa “gateway”. So only peer to peer communication, but then you would need to figure out your own connection/interface to the internet. In this case, you are fixed to one scaling factor, one data rate, one bandwidth, etc. as a module can only listen on one fixed parameters. This is no longer LoRaWAN.

I suggest to follow this link to our forum, to see which LoRaWAN gateways we recommend. Recommended LoRaWAN gateway - #7 by Tom