Performance of a low-power wide-area network based on LoRa technology: Doppler robustness, scalability, and coverage

The article provides an analysis and reports experimental validation of the various performance metrics of the LoRa low-power wide-area network technology. The LoRa modulation is based on chirp spread spectrum, which enables use of low-quality oscillators in the end device, and to make the synchronization faster and more reliable. Moreover, LoRa technology provides over 150 dB link budget, providing good coverage. Therefore, LoRa seems to be quite a promising option for implementing communication in many diverse Internet of Things applications. In this article, we first briefly overview the specifics of the LoRa technology and analyze the scalability of the LoRa wide-area network. Then, we introduce setups of the performance measurements. The results show that using the transmit power of 14 dBm and the highest spreading factor of 12, more than 60% of the packets are received from the distance of 30 km on water. With the same configuration, we measured the performance of LoRa communication in mobile scenarios. The presented results reveal that at around 40 km/h, the communication performance gets worse, because duration of the LoRa-modulated symbol exceeds coherence time. However, it is expected that communication link is more reliable when lower spreading factors are used.