Recently, the role of Low-Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) as enablers of the Internet of Things (IoT) is emerging. Contrary to what is commonly believed, despite they operate in unlicensed frequency bands, these technologies are subject to stringent spectrum usage regulations, in terms of both channel occupancy and transmission power. In this work, we focus on the LPWAN technology based on the Long-Range™ (LoRa) modulation, proposing a radically new approach with respect to the default Medium Access Control (MAC) procedure in LoRaWAN™, i.e., the protocol stack most widely used on top of LoRa. In particular, we describe and evaluate a new MAC protocol that exploits a novel operation mode called time-power multiplexing, to boost the capacity of LoRa networks. The simulation results show that, with respect to the default LoRaWAN MAC protocol, the proposed solution effectively increases the number of users that the network can sustain.
Boosting network capacity in LoRaWAN through time-power multiplexing
M. Centenaro;
2018-01-01
Abstract
Recently, the role of Low-Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) as enablers of the Internet of Things (IoT) is emerging. Contrary to what is commonly believed, despite they operate in unlicensed frequency bands, these technologies are subject to stringent spectrum usage regulations, in terms of both channel occupancy and transmission power. In this work, we focus on the LPWAN technology based on the Long-Range™ (LoRa) modulation, proposing a radically new approach with respect to the default Medium Access Control (MAC) procedure in LoRaWAN™, i.e., the protocol stack most widely used on top of LoRa. In particular, we describe and evaluate a new MAC protocol that exploits a novel operation mode called time-power multiplexing, to boost the capacity of LoRa networks. The simulation results show that, with respect to the default LoRaWAN MAC protocol, the proposed solution effectively increases the number of users that the network can sustain.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
