Designing in Parallel: Hardware, RF, and business - Gavin Brown

Gavin Brown, VP of Strategic Growth and Design Partner at RAKwireless, talks about how solid industrial design and RF engineering turn LoRaWAN from a promising idea into reliable, large-scale deployments.

With a background in industrial design and product development, he explains how RAK’s core pillars—gateways, modules, and supporting services—give customers a path of least resistance into LoRaWAN, whether they’re building networks, nodes, or full end-to-end solutions.

Gavin digs into what typical RAK customers really look like: teams who know their own domain well but need help bridging the gap into wireless and LoRaWAN.

He describes industrial design as a hybrid of art, design, and engineering, and shows why the best projects are “front heavy,” putting RF constraints, cost, supply chain, and mechanical realities into the strategy before anyone obsessively sketches enclosures or PCB shapes.

That early thinking is especially critical for LoRaWAN, where antenna placement and housing can make the difference between pain and success.

He shares real-world examples, from a 25–50,000-node deployment that struggled with range because RF was an afterthought, to a utility project that achieved a 63 km link by respecting physics and integrating the antenna properly into a metal manhole cover.

Gavin also highlights some of his favorite RAK designs, including the compact WisGate Soho Pro gateway with fully integrated antennas, and explains how off-grid solar gateway solutions and gateway mesh backhaul are opening up LoRaWAN in remote regions like the valleys of Wales.

Throughout the conversation, he returns to a core theme: LoRaWAN works brilliantly when hardware, RF, and business goals are designed together, not bolted on at the end.

Gavin on LinkedIn

RAK Wireless

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