Single Gateway system - Half Duplex problem workaround?

ChirpStack Gateway Bridge
1

I am looking into packet loss in up links on an system with only one 8-channel gateway (RAK 7258).

As we know, the gateway cannot receive up links whilst transmitting downlinks.
So then any uplink packet sent during the time our gateway is sending a downlink will be lost. = packet loss.

My question is:

Is it possible to set up a separate single-channel gateway for sending down link packets only? So all chirpstack downlink messages will need to be routed to this gateway only.
I assume that If I physically separate this DL only gateway, by say, 50m and only use RX2 on, say 869.400 (in EU), then I will still get uplink packets into my main gateway even when Chirpstack is sending downlinks…

Cheers
P

2

This is not possible by default. When a gateway receives an uplink it is timestamped with its internal counter. In order to schedule a Class-A downlink, this same counter value is used for accurate scheduling. So if ChirpStack would route the Class-A downlink to a different gateway, this gateway would not know when to schedule the downlink using the provided counter as it is not synced with the receiving gateway.