Improving LoRaWAN Performance by Randomizing Network Access for Data and On-Air Activation

Abstract

During the past years, the LoRaWAN technology took a prominent position among the wireless connectivity solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT) and has attracted substantial attention. The LoRaWAN technology has become popular for collecting the data from the sensors, which traditionally have periodic communication patterns. Meanwhile, recent studies have shown that the LoRaWAN procedures, such as the over-the-air activation, may also compromise the uniformity of data traffic distribution. Therefore, in this study, we investigate how the communication pattern of LoRaWAN devices during activation and data communication affects the overall network performance with respect to speed of activation and overall packet delivery probability. We show that the periodic communication patterns, widely employed by commercial LoRaWAN devices today, are less efficient than the patterns featuring random delays between the packets. Also, we find that introduction of a random delay between uplink data packets helps randomizing the channel access and enables network performance boost both for the application data transfer and during the activation. Finally, we show that implementation of the suggested communication patterns modification is feasible for the state-of-the-art LoRaWAN transceivers with no hardware modifications.