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. 2022 May 20;22(10):3885.
doi: 10.3390/s22103885.

LoRaCog: A Protocol for Cognitive Radio-Based LoRa Network

Firas Salika  1 , Abbass Nasser  1   2 , Maxime Mroue  3 , Benoît Parrein  4 , Ali Mansour  2
Affiliations

LoRaCog: A Protocol for Cognitive Radio-Based LoRa Network

Firas Salika et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new protocol called LoRaCog to introduce the concept of Cognitive Radio (CR) in the LoRa network. LoRaCog will enable access to a wider spectrum than that of LoRaWAN by using the unutilized spectrum and thus has better efficiency without impacting the end devices' battery consumption. LoRa networks are managed by LoRaWAN protocol and operate on the unlicensed Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band. LoRaWAN is one of thriving protocols for Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWAN) implemented for the Internet of Things (IoT). With the growing demand for IoT, the unlicensed spectrum is expected to be congested, unlike the licensed spectrum, which is not fully utilized. This can be fairly balanced by applying CR to the LoRa network, where the End Devices (EDs) may change the operating channel opportunistically over the free/available licensed spectrum. Spectrum sensing, channel selection and channel availability relevance become essential features to be respected by the proposed protocol. The main objective of adding CR to LoRaWAN is reducing the congestion and maintaining LoRaWAN's suitability for battery-operated devices. This is achieved by modifying LoRaWAN components such as the ED receive window RX2 rearrangement, spectrum sensing functionality by gateway (GW) for identifying unused channels, and reaching a decision on the unused channels by network server (NS). These changes will create LoRaCog meeting spectrum efficiency and maintain the same level of battery consumption as in LoRaWAN. Numerical simulations show a significant decrease in the rejected packet rate (more than 50%) with LoRaCog when more EDs use cognitive channels. As the results prove, LoRaWAN can reach above 50% rejected packets for the simulated environment versus 24% rejection for LoRaCog using only one additional channel (means total two channels). This means that the system can eliminate rejected packets almost completely when operating over the possible many channels. As well, these results show the flexibility in the system to utilize the available frequencies in an efficient and fair way. The results also reveal that a lower number of GWs is needed for LoRaCog from LoRaWAN to cover the same area.

Keywords: IoT; LPWAN; LoRaCog; LoRaWAN; cognitive radio; licensed spectrum; primary users; rejected packet rate; secondary users; unlicensed spectrum.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Spectrum holes: The CR user is able to access the available channels and is obliged to avoid the occupied ones in order to minimize the interference [27].
Figure 2
Figure 2
LoRaWANProtocol Stack [44].
Figure 3
Figure 3
Class A operation.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Cognitive Radio Cycle managed by LoRaCog.
Figure 5
Figure 5
LoRaCog Logarithm.
Figure 6
Figure 6
LoRaCog Class A Operation.
Figure 7
Figure 7
LoRaCog Global Architecture.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Representation of the EDs and the GWs distribution in our simulations.
Figure 9
Figure 9
The evolution of the rejected packets for both LoRaWAN 868 MHz and LoRaCog 868/438 MHz for different percentage splits.
Figure 10
Figure 10
LoRaWAN 4 and 6 GWs vs. LoRaCog 4 GWs.
Figure 11
Figure 11
LoRaWAN 868 MHz vs. LoRaCog 868/438 MHz with PU 1%.
Figure 12
Figure 12
Evolution of the rejected packets for LoRaWAN and LoRaCog for a probability of re-appearance of 5%. (a) More than 50% of the EDs are operating on the cognitive channel. (b) Less than 50% of the EDs are operating on the cognitive channel.
Figure 13
Figure 13
LoRaWAN 868 MHz vs. LoRaCog 868/438 MHz with PU re-appearance probability = 10%.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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