Performance Exploration of LoRa Network in Indoor Environment

Abstract

Long Range (LoRa) technology has been most adopted in the IoT domain due to its configurable transmission parameters which can be adjusted to enhance the network performance. To deploy a LoRa device in a real field application, it is critical to configure these parameters based on the scenario the LoRa device is deployed in. The current work experimentally evaluates the link-level performance of the LoRa network. Measurements are carried out in an indoor area considering both line of site (LoS) and highly obstructive environment. The network performance is investigated in terms of received signal strength indicator (RSSI), signal to noise ratio (SNR) and packet reception rate (PRR). The impact of various spreading factors on the performance of the deployed LoRa setup is also analyzed. Measurements indicate that RSSI and SNR increases with increase in SF and offers maximum values in an LoS environment corresponding to same SF. Further, the bit error rate (BER) of the link set up has been evaluated using the received values of the SNR at the gateway and it has been observed that BER decreases with increase in SF and is lesser for LoS scenario.