Large-scale LoRa networks: a mode adaptive protocol

• Autor(a) principal: Luís, Miguel
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Sargento, Susana, Fernandes, Rui
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.21/13748
• topic: Internet of Things (IoT); LoRa; Medium access; Performance analysis; Scalability

Low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs) are probably the most promising radio access technologies for Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications. Amongst these, one of the most auspicious solutions is LoRa, a versatile technology highly compatible with urban environments, enabling long-range communications. Most of the LoRa-based medium access protocols operate under the ALOHA rationale, whose performance is known to be fairly poor. This work targets the medium access in single-channel large-scale LoRa networks, proposing a new protocol, denoted as the LoRa mode adaptive protocol (LoRa-MAP), which manages to maintain the best possible connection between end nodes and the gateway, by adapting the LoRa's physical layer parameters and making use of control packets for its coordination without violating the duty-cycle constraints of both end nodes and gateway. An analysis on different medium access schemes is conducted, aiming to perceive how different parameters and network layouts influence the coordination process. An energy expenditure analysis is conducted comparing LoRa-MAP to simpler solutions to study the impact of additional transmission/listening periods. The simulation results have shown that the proposed solution increases the LoRa network scalability, deeming it a great candidate for IoT environments.