Experience of LoRa low power wide area network

• Main Author: Liando, Jansen Christian
• Other Authors: -
• Format: Thesis-Master by Research
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2019
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Computer systems organization::Performance of systems
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/88823; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/47662
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Long Range is an Low Power Wide Area Network technology designed for the Internet of Things. It has gained significant momentum amongst both industrial and research communities in recent years. Patented by Semtech, Long Range makes use of chirp spread spectrum modulation to deliver data with promises of long battery life, far-reaching communication distances, and a high node density at the cost of data rate. A series of experiments were conducted to verify the claims made by Semtech on Lora technology. Results show that Long Range is capable of communicating over 10km under line-of-sight environments. However, under non-line-of-sight environments, Long Range's performance is severely affected by obstructions such as buildings and vegetations. Moreover, the promise of prolonged battery life requires extreme tuning of parameters. Lastly, a Long Range gateway supports up to 6,000 nodes with Packet Reception Rate requirement of >70%. This dissertation also explores the relationship between Long Range transmission parameters and proposes an algorithm to determine optimal settings in terms of coverage and power consumption under non-line-of-sight environments. It further investigates the impact of Long Range Wide Area Network on energy consumption and network capacity along with implementation of a Long Range medium access mechanism and possible gains brought forth by implementing such a mechanism.