Experimental Insights into the Performance of LoRa/LoRaWAN Radio Interface in Smart City Deployments

Abstract

There are numerous network-reliant devices, sometimes diverse in meaning and material, which differ in sending-related functionalities such as coordination and range. Unreliability in LoRaWAN networks may be caused by signal variation, as well as by collision and by other activities of the network. Collisions between networks result in frame collision, which mostly results in packet drops while devices have used the same LoRa parameters (SF, BW, and CF). The periodicity in transmission and size of the payload contributes to colliding states as the longer the transmission times (ToA); the channel is being occupied for a longer time [1]. These include transmission power, as well as site positions of the gateway. This experimental study throws light on the collisions and interference of the data on LoRaWAN, focusing on measuring how different SFs and payload sizes affect the quality of the scenario data transmission in interference scenarios involving the inter-SF type. The study is quite important regarding smart cities as IoT networks will then require communication that are reliable and scalable. Failure to use SFs and packet lengths appropriately increases ToA, leading to higher latency and packet loss, especially in Non-Line of Sight (NLOS) environments. We used RSSI, ToA, and Packet Data Rate (PDR) to optimize network reli-ability. It can be concluded that inter-SF interference influences ToA, resulting in increased packet loss in NLOS situations.