On the performance of multi-gateway LoRaWAN deployments:an experimental study

Abstract A remarkable progress in the Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies over the recent years opens new opportunities for developing versatile massive Internet of Things (IoT) applications. In this paper, we focus on one of the most popular LPWAN technologies operating in the license-exempt frequency bands, named LoRaWAN. The key contribution of this study is our unique set of results obtained during an extensive measurement campaign conducted in the city of Brno, Czech Republic. During a three-months-period, the connectivity of a public Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) with more than 20 gateways (GWs) was assessed at 231 test locations. This paper presents an analysis of the obtained results, aimed at capturing the effects related to the spatial diversity of the GW locations and the real-life multi-GW network operation with all its practical features. One of our findings is the fact that only for 47% tested locations the GW featuring the minimum geographical distance demonstrated the highest received signal strength and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Also, our results captured and characterized the variations in the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) and SNR as a function of the communication distance in an urban environment, and illustrated the distribution of the spreading factors (SFs) as a result of the adaptive data rate (ADR) algorithm operation in a real-life multi-GW deployment

Communication performance of a real-life wide-area low-power network based on Sigfox technology

Abstract In this paper, we study real-world performance of Sigfox, which is one of the most mature Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) technologies that operate in unlicensed frequency bands. During an extensive measurement campaign conducted over three months in the city of Brno, Czech Republic, we assessed the communication performance and the radio channel properties in 311 different test locations. We observed that despite the challenging natural landscape and urban environment of the test area, more than 94% of the packets sent were received successfully, with at least one packet delivered from 297 out of 311 tested locations. Our results also reported experiment-based radio channel and signal-to-noise characterization as well as provided insights into the efficiency of two crucial mechanisms used by Sigfox to improve the packet delivery — packet repetition and multi-gateway reception. Finally, we employed our experimental data to understand the efficiency of two non-fingerprint localization methods based on received signal strength indicator in a practical Sigfox network

Unifying multi-radio communication technologies to enable mMTC applications in B5G networks

Abstract Even though the wireless communication technologies have evolved significantly in the last decade, the performance requirements of versatile massive Machine-Type Communication (mMTC) use-cases grow at even faster pace. For this reason, the challenge of providing energy-efficient, reliable, secure, and variable devices with ubiquitous connectivity cannot be addressed by any single Radio Access Technology (RAT) available today. Therefore, the concept of multi-RAT devices in the context of next-generation communication technologies (5G and beyond 5G (B5G)) comes into play. In this paper, we investigate the utility of multi-RAT IoT connectivity in practice with respect to a Smart City scenario, in which the location of public transport vehicles e.g., trams and buses is tracked and reported by a device equipped with two Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) technologies i.e., Narrowband IoT (3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)) and LoRaWAN (non-3GPP). Both technologies got matured and have shown their momentum in the recent years, and are expected to play the key role also in the future. We first detail the constructed multi-RAT prototype and then report the initial results of its evaluation in a pilot deployment in the city of Brno, Czech Republic. The obtained results illustratively confirm the feasibility of joint usage of two diverse LPWAN RATs while their combination brings higher flexibility, reliability, and improve the overall Quality of Service (QoS) to wireless connectivity