Performance Analysis Comparison between LoRa and Frequency Hopping-based LPWAN

Abstract

The number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices are increasing exponentially as the demand for data is driving to days market. Consequently, the need for testing and implementing new technologies is inevitable to be able to adapt to the growing number of devices and applications' needs. IoT mainly relies on Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs). Different LPWAN technologies have distinctive performance metrics in terms of latency, throughput, covered distances, etc. Therefore, the choice of the IoT connectivity option is crucial to satisfy the precise needs of heterogeneous applications and network deployments. Among various LPWANs, LoRa-LPWAN stands out due to upright synthesis of optimized battery lifetime, long communication range and cost. LoRa Physical layer chiefly relies on chirp spread spectrum modulation with six spreading factors, while LoRaWAN MAC protocol imposes exploiting random channel frequency-hopping for each transmission using unlicensed frequency bands. Thus, the adopted CSS modulation operating on top LoRaWAN is analogical to frequency-hopping based modulation. Given the akin medium access behaviour of exploiting frequency-hopping prompted by different layers in each system, this paper provides a data-driven comparison between LoRa and a variant of frequency-hopping based modulation; Telegram Splitting Multiple Access. Network performance comparison is conducted through system level simulations using multiple IoT applications.