Performance Evaluation of Long Range (LoRa) Wireless RF Technology blue for the Internet of Things (IoT) Using Dragino LoRa at 915 MHz

Presenter Information

Victor Lopez
Hemani Kaushal
Zornitza Prodanoff

Faculty Sponsor

Dr. Hemani Kaushal, Dr. Zornitza Prodanoff (School of Computing)

Faculty Sponsor College

College of Computing, Engineering & Construction

Faculty Sponsor Department

Engineering

Location

SOARS Virtual Conference

Presentation Website

https://unfsoars.domains.unf.edu/performance-evaluation-of-long-range-lora-wireless-rf-technology-for-the-internet-of-things-iot-using-dragino-lora-at-915-mhz/

Keywords

SOARS (Conference) (2020 : University of North Florida) -- Posters; University of North Florida. Office of Undergraduate Research; University of North Florida. Graduate School; College students – Research -- Florida – Jacksonville -- Posters; University of North Florida – Graduate students – Research -- Posters; University of North Florida. School of Engineering -- Research -- Posters; School of Computing--Research --Posters; Engineering; Math; and Computer Sciences -- Research – Posters

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) is a developing concept that introduces the network of physical sensors which are interconnected to each other. Some sensors are wirelessly connected among themselves and to the internet. Currently, IoT applications demand substantial requirements in terms of Radio Access Network (RAN) such as long-range outdoor coverage, environmental factors, obstructions, interference, power consumption, and many others. Also, the current wireless technologies are not able to satisfy all these requirements simultaneously. Therefore, there is no single wireless standard that would predominate the IoT. However, one relevant wireless radio solution to IoT is known as Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN), which is one of the Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies. LPWAN has appeared as a significant solution to offer advantages such as long-range coverage connectivity with low power consumption, an unlicensed spectrum, and affordability. Most likely LoRa with the inherent long-range coverage and low power consumption features will become the “go-to” technology for IoT applications. For that reason, the proposed research entails the performance evaluation of LoRa IoT application under different scenarios at the University of the North Florida campus. Each scenario includes dynamic and static tests that focus on performance evaluation of the LoRaWAN physical-layer, such as different configurations, coverage range, strength and quality indicators (RSSI and SNR respectively), test schedules, and environmental factors. This application will involve connecting to different IoT servers in the cloud, such as The Things Network (TTN), Amazon Web Services (AWS), integration with Cayenne.

Comments

Hello, good afternoon, my name is Victor Lopez, and I am going to introduce my project research. The title is: “Performance Evaluation of Long Range (LoRa) Wireless RF Technology for the Internet of Things (IoT) Using Dragino LoRa at 915 MHz”.

I am going to explain: What is the Internet of Things (IoT).? IoT is a developing concept that introduces the network of physical sensors which are interconnected to each other. Within this smart environment, smart objects use the inter-connectivity to process, communicate, and exchange data among themselves without any human interaction. Therefore, there is no single wireless standard that would predominate the IoT. However, one relevant wireless radio solution to IoT is known as Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN), which is one of the Low Power Wide Area Network (LP-WAN) technologies. LPWAN has appeared as a significant solution to offer advantages such as long-range coverage connectivity

with low power consumption, an unlicensed spectrum, and affordability. Most likely, LoRa, with the inherent long-range coverage and low power consumption features, will become the “go-to” technology for IoT applications.

Different technologies such as Bluetooth, WIFI are some technologies for IoT, but LoRa has the best coverage communication. For example, the Bluetooth’s coverage could be at least 10 meters, and about WIFI could be at least 30 meters, but with LoRa, the coverage range could be at least 10 Kilometers, so this is why I am very interested in studying about this topic.

Some key features of LoRa are:

•Long-range coverage (roughly 10 km depending on line-of-sight) with low power.

•LoRa has the best link budget of any other standardized wireless communication technologies, such as Narrow Band (NB) – IoT, Sigfox, among others.

•Operates under unlicensed frequency ISM bands (ISM is Industrial, Scientific, and Medical)

•Security (end-to-end AES 128 encryption)

•Geo-location (GPS tracking applications)

•Mobility (communication with devices in motion)

About my research project, I am going to try to connect a different sensor around the UNF campus. These sensors are wireless, and I am going to use temperature, humidity, and flame sensors. Therefore, I am going to connect sensors around the UNF campus, and I am going to use one LoRa-Gateway in the roof of the Engineering Building (4). So, one single Gateway will be covering the whole UNF campus because, as I mentioned, with LoRa we can get 10 kilometers of coverage.

So, the performance evaluation of LoRa includes testing this technology under different scenarios. These scenarios are at different times of the day, such as in the morning, noon, and night. Also, I am going to focus on the physical layer of LoRa. In the physical layer, we have different configurations that we can change. One of those is the Spreading Factor (SP), another one is Coding Range (CR), etc. Therefore, I am going to change these parameters in order to find, which is the best configuration for each scenario.

For that reason, the proposed research entails the performance evaluation of LoRa IoT application under different scenarios at the University of the North Florida campus. Each scenario includes dynamic and static tests that focus on performance evaluation of the LoRaWAN physical layer.

Also, this application will involve connecting to different IoT servers in the cloud, such as The Things Network TTN and Amazon Web Services, integrated with Cayenne app. Also, this research includes a coverage simulation will be performed using the radio planning tool. In addition, comparative analyses will be conducted on results collected from the application using Dragino LoRa IoT Development Kit 915 MHz.

This new technology is the best for IoT because we can connect small wireless devices with a small power consumption with a long-range; these are the key features of LoRa. These are why my mentors Dr. Kaushal from Electrical Engineering school and Dr. Prodanoff from Computing School, are very interested in working on this topic. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope to see you soon and show more about my project research because I have a Demo that I want to present to you. Thank you. Have a good day.