Title
A study of the LoRa signal propagation in forest, urban, and suburban environments
Abstract
Sensing is an activity of paramount importance for smart cities. The coverage of large areas based on reduced infrastructure and low energy consumption is desirable. In this context, Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) plays an important role. In this paper, we investigate LoRa, a low-power technology offering large coverage, but low transmission rates. Radio range and data rate are tunable by using different spreading factors and coding rates, which are configuration parameters of the LoRa physical layer. LoRa can cover large areas but variations in the environment affect link quality. This work studies the propagation of LoRa signals in forest, urban, and suburban vehicular environments. Besides being environments with variable propagation conditions, we evaluate scenarios with node mobility. To characterize the communication link, we mainly use the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), and Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR). As for node mobility, speeds are chosen according to prospective applications. Our results show that the link reaches up to 250 m in the forest scenario, while in the vehicular scenario it reaches up to 2 km. In contrast, in scenarios with high-density buildings and human activity, the maximum range of the link reaches up to 200 m in the urban scenario.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.1007/s12243-020-00789-w
ANNALS OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Smart cities,Low power wide area networks,Wireless sensor networks,LoRa technology
Journal
75.0
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
SP7-8
0003-4347
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.48
0
6