Performance Evaluation of LoRa in Mixed Environments of sparsely Distributed Vegetation and Urban scenarios

Abstract

The Internet of Things has led to numerous wide area applications, where long range communication is becoming essential nowadays. However, it is important that the data generated is transferred by maintaining essential Quality of Service (QoS) metrics in a long range communication. The Quality of Service metrics can be analysed by simulating different environmental scenarios. However, due to constraints on data availability, simulating a geographical area becomes difficult and quite limited. This makes it important to perform experimental field trials for calculation of Quality of Service metrics. This paper studies the impact of three different environmental scenarios on the Quality of Service metrics. The scenarios considered are areas with sparse vegetation and areas with mediumly distributed buildings. The sparse vegetation scenario considers both Line-of-Sight and NonLine-of-Sight conditions, while the mediumly distributed building scenario considers only the Non-Line-of-Sight condition. It is observed from the field trials for Line-of-Sight conditions between the End-Device and Gateway that a reliable range of up to 1.3 km is possible. Similarly, it is also observed from the field trials that for Non-Line-of-Sight condition with vegetative obstacles a reliable range up to 1 km is possible, while for the Non-Line-of-Sight condition with buildings as obstacles a reliable range up to 400 m is possible.