Design and Performance Analysis of IoT Based Sensor System Using LoRa

Abstract

The fourth industrial revolution (IR 4.0) can be characterized by extensive use of Internet of Things (IoT) technology. Conventional sensor systems rely heavily on existing wireless technology such as ZigBee, Bluetooth and WiFi. However, these technologies have some limitations which include higher power consumption and lower coverage. LoRa can improve these limitations by enhancing the coverage area while using much lower power consumption. This paper describes the design of a sensor system which combines both IoT and LoRa technologies. The system consists of a LoRa sensor node and a gateway node. Arduino Uno, LoRa module and temperature sensor are used to design the sensor node. The real-time value of the temperature will be forwarded to the gateway node which consists a Raspberry Pi and another LoRa module. The performances of the system are evaluated both in line of sight and non-line of sight conditions. Specifically, the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) and signal to noise ratio (SNR) are studied for different distances between the sensor and gateway nodes. The results showed that RSSI of −117 dBm and SNR of −17 dB can be achieved for a distance of 300 m in non-line of sight condition. On the other hand, RSSI as high as −79 dBm and SNR of 3 dB are recorded for the same distance but in line of sight condition.