Reliability Improvement of LoRa with ARQ and Relay Node

Abstract

In our modern world, many Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are being researched and developed. IoT devices are currently being used in many fields. IoT devices use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, however, communication distance is short and battery consumption is high. In areas such as smart cities and smart farms, IoT technology is needed to support a wide coverage with low power consumption. Low Power Wide Area (LPWA), which is a transmission used in IoT supporting a wide area with low power consumption, has evolved. LPWA includes Long Range (LoRa), Narrowband (NB-IoT), and Sigfox. LoRa offers many benefits as it communicates the longest distances, is cheap and consumes less battery. LoRa is used in many countries and covers a range of hundreds of square kilometers (km2) with a single gateway. However, if there are many obstacles to smart cities and smart farms, it causes communication problems. This paper proposes two (2) solutions to this problem: the relay method which is a multi-hop method and the Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) system that detects packet loss in real-time and requests retransmission for LoRa. In this study, the actual performance of LoRa in the problematic environment was measured and the proposed method was applied. It was confirmed that the transmission rate of LoRa dropped when there were many obstacles such as trees. To use LoRa in a smart farm with a lot of space, multi-hop was observed to be better. An ARQ system is needed to compensate for the unexpected drop in the forward rate due to the increase in IoT devices. This research focused on reliability, however, additional network methods and automatic repeat request (ARQ) systems considering battery time should be researched in symmetry. This study covers the interdisciplinary field of computer science and wireless low power communication engineering. We have analyzed the LoRa/LoRaWAN technology in an experimental approach, which has been somewhat less studied than cellular network or WiFi technology. In addition, we presented and improved the performance evaluation results in consideration of various local and climatic environments.