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. 2018 Mar 3;18(3):772.
doi: 10.3390/s18030772.

Performance Evaluation of LoRa Considering Scenario Conditions

Ramon Sanchez-Iborra  1 , Jesus Sanchez-Gomez  2 , Juan Ballesta-Viñas  3 , Maria-Dolores Cano  4 , Antonio F Skarmeta  5
Affiliations

Performance Evaluation of LoRa Considering Scenario Conditions

Ramon Sanchez-Iborra et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

New verticals within the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm such as smart cities, smart farming, or goods monitoring, among many others, are demanding strong requirements to the Radio Access Network (RAN) in terms of coverage, end-node's power consumption, and scalability. The technologies employed so far to provide IoT scenarios with connectivity, e.g., wireless sensor network and cellular technologies, are not able to simultaneously cope with these three requirements. Thus, a novel solution known as Low Power - Wide Area Network (LP-WAN) has emerged as a promising alternative to provide with low-cost and low-power-consumption connectivity to end-nodes spread in a wide area. Concretely, the Long-Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) technology is one of the LP-WAN platforms that is receiving greater attention from both the industry and the academia. For that reason, in this work, a comprehensive performance evaluation of LoRaWAN under different environmental conditions is presented. The results are obtained from three real scenarios, namely, urban, suburban, and rural, considering both dynamic and static conditions, hence a discussion about the most proper LoRaWAN physical-layer configuration for each scenario is provided. Besides, a theoretical coverage study is also conducted by the use of a radio planning tool considering topographic maps and a precise propagation model. From the attained results, it can be concluded that it is necessary to evaluate the propagation conditions of the deployment scenario prior to the system implantation in order to reach a compromise between the robustness of the network and the transmission data-rate.

Keywords: IoT; LP-WAN; LoRa; LoRaWAN; Smart cities.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The founding sponsors had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) stack.
Figure 2
Figure 2
LoRaWAN star-of-stars topology.
Figure 3
Figure 3
On-board unit detail.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Base-station detail. (a) Controller; (b) Antenna.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Theoretical coverage map by considering the Okumura–Hata propagation model. Urban scenario.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Theoretical coverage map by considering the Okumura–Hata propagation model. Suburban scenario.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Theoretical coverage map by considering the Okumura–Hata propagation model. Rural scenario.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) heat map in the urban scenario. (a) DR0; and (b) DR5.
Figure 9
Figure 9
RSSI heat map in the suburban scenario. (a) DR0; and (b) DR5.
Figure 10
Figure 10
RSSI heat map in the rural scenario. (a) DR0; and (b) DR5.
Figure 10
Figure 10
RSSI heat map in the rural scenario. (a) DR0; and (b) DR5.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Impact of the CR and payload length on the PDR for the three evaluated scenarios. (a) Urban scenario, impact of CR; (b) Urban scenario, impact of payload length; (c) Suburban scenario. Impact of CR; (d) Suburban scenario, impact of payload length; (e) Rural scenario, impact of CR; (f) Rural scenario, impact of payload length.
Figure 12
Figure 12
PDR evolution with the distance for each DR in the urban scenario. CR = 4/8, payload = 20 B.
Figure 13
Figure 13
Sampling points for the nomadic test.
Figure 14
Figure 14
PDR obtained in the nomadic test for the urban and suburban scenarios with DR0 and DR5 for CR = 4/8, and payload length = 40 Bñ (a) Urban scenario; (b) Suburban scenario.
Figure 14
Figure 14
PDR obtained in the nomadic test for the urban and suburban scenarios with DR0 and DR5 for CR = 4/8, and payload length = 40 Bñ (a) Urban scenario; (b) Suburban scenario.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Sanchez-Iborra R., Cano M.-D. State of the art in LP-WAN solutions for industrial IoT services. Sensors. 2016;16:708. doi: 10.3390/s16050708. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Sanchez-Gomez J., Sanchez-Iborra R., Skarmeta A. Experimental comparison of LoRa and FSK as IoT-communication-enabling modulations; Proceedings of the IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom’17); Singapore. 4–8 December 2017; pp. 1–6.
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