Understanding the limits of LoRaWAN

The quick proliferation of LPWAN networks, being LoRaWAN one of the most adopted, raised the interest of the industry, network operators and facilitated the development of novel services based on large scale and simple network structures. LoRaWAN brings the desired ubiquitous connectivity to enable most of the outdoor IoT applications and its growth and quick adoption are real proofs of that. Yet the technology has some limitations that need to be understood in order to avoid over-use of the technology. In this article we aim to provide an impartial overview of what are the limitations of such technology, and in a comprehensive manner bring use case examples to show where the limits are

Impact of EU duty cycle and transmission power limitations for sub-GHz LPWAN SRDs : an overview and future challenges

Long-range sub-GHz technologies such as LoRaWAN, SigFox, IEEE 802.15.4, and DASH7 are increasingly popular for academic research and daily life applications. However, especially in the European Union (EU), the use of their corresponding frequency bands are tightly regulated, since they must confirm to the short-range device (SRD) regulations. Regulations and standards for SRDs exist on various levels, from global to national, but are often a source of confusion. Not only are multiple institutes responsible for drafting legislation and regulations, depending on the type of document can these rules be informational or mandatory. Regulations also vary from region to region; for example, regulations in the United States of America (USA) rely on electrical field strength and harmonic strength, while EU regulations are based on duty cycle and maximum transmission power. A common misconception is the presence of a common 1% duty cycle, while in fact the duty cycle is frequency band-specific and can be loosened under certain circumstances. This paper clarifies the various regulations for the European region, the parties involved in drafting and enforcing regulation, and the impact on recent technologies such as SigFox, LoRaWAN, and DASH7. Furthermore, an overview is given of potential mitigation approaches to cope with the duty cycle constraints, as well as future research directions

Scalability analysis of large-scale LoRaWAN networks in ns-3

As LoRaWAN networks are actively being deployed in the field, it is important to comprehend the limitations of this Low Power Wide Area Network technology. Previous work has raised questions in terms of the scalability and capacity of LoRaWAN networks as the number of end devices grows to hundreds or thousands per gateway. Some works have modeled LoRaWAN networks as pure ALOHA networks, which fails to capture important characteristics such as the capture effect and the effects of interference. Other works provide a more comprehensive model by relying on empirical and stochastic techniques. This work uses a different approach where a LoRa error model is constructed from extensive complex baseband bit error rate simulations and used as an interference model. The error model is combined with the LoRaWAN MAC protocol in an ns-3 module that enables to study multi channel, multi spreading factor, multi gateway, bi-directional LoRaWAN networks with thousands of end devices. Using the lorawan ns-3 module, a scalability analysis of LoRaWAN shows the detrimental impact of downstream traffic on the delivery ratio of confirmed upstream traffic. The analysis shows that increasing gateway density can ameliorate but not eliminate this effect, as stringent duty cycle requirements for gateways continue to limit downstream opportunities.Comment: 12 pages, submitted to the IEEE Internet of Things Journa

2D Time-frequency interference modelling using stochastic geometry for performance evaluation in Low-Power Wide-Area Networks

In wireless networks, interferences between trans- missions are modelled either in time or frequency domain. In this article, we jointly analyze interferences in the time- frequency domain using a stochastic geometry model assuming the total time-frequency resources to be a two-dimensional plane and transmissions from Internet of Things (IoT) devices time- frequency patterns on this plane. To evaluate the interference, we quantify the overlap between the information packets: provided that the overlap is not too strong, the packets are not necessarily lost due to capture effect. This flexible model can be used for multiple medium access scenarios and is especially adapted to the random time-frequency access schemes used in Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs). By characterizing the outage probability and throughput, our approach permits to evaluate the performance of two representative LPWA technologies Sigfox{\textsuperscript \textregistered} and LoRaWA{\textsuperscript \textregistered}

Grant-free Radio Access IoT Networks: Scalability Analysis in Coexistence Scenarios

IoT networks with grant-free radio access, like SigFox and LoRa, offer low-cost durable communications over unlicensed band. These networks are becoming more and more popular due to the ever-increasing need for ultra durable, in terms of battery lifetime, IoT networks. Most studies evaluate the system performance assuming single radio access technology deployment. In this paper, we study the impact of coexisting competing radio access technologies on the system performance. Considering \mathpzc K technologies, defined by time and frequency activity factors, bandwidth, and power, which share a set of radio resources, we derive closed-form expressions for the successful transmission probability, expected battery lifetime, and experienced delay as a function of distance to the serving access point. Our analytical model, which is validated by simulation results, provides a tool to evaluate the coexistence scenarios and analyze how introduction of a new coexisting technology may degrade the system performance in terms of success probability and battery lifetime. We further investigate solutions in which this destructive effect could be compensated, e.g., by densifying the network to a certain extent and utilizing joint reception