When assuming the same data rate and no special antennas: would uplinks and downlinks have the same characteristics? Like say that the gateway is installed quite high, and the device is much closer to the ground, would an SF7BW125 uplink and downlink have the same reception quality? I wonder if RF shadows and things like Fresnel zones could affect one direction more than the opposite direction.
Aside: for EU868, RX2 always uses SF9BW125 (or SF12 for an OTAA Join Accept), with some higher TX power to make up for the faster data rate. An EU868 SF7 or SF8 uplink would often/always yield RX1 with the same SF for the downlink, but SF9 and up would often/always yield RX2 with SF9 instead. So, for SF9 and up the uplink and downlink are not symmetrical in EU868. (For SF9 the downlink is actually better, I think, given it’s using the same SF with a higher TX power.) Other regions may have specific downlink settings too, not matching the uplink settings.