Impact of the packet delivery ratio (PDR) and network throughput in gateway placement LoRaWAN networks

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) is a fast and rapidly growing environment with LoRa technology as a leading Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN). It is paramount important to understand the LoRaWAN limitations/drawbacks and capabilities in terms of its scalability, coverage, probability and network throughput while LoRa networks are being rapidly deployed across the globe. Therefore, this paper intends to evaluate the LoRa network performance through the use of improved LoRa gateway algorithm for a Long-Range transmission technology and FLoRa (Framework for LoRa) which is a simulation framework for carrying out end-to-end simulations for LoRa networks. More specific, this study analyse and present the results of data collected from the FLoRa simulator after implementing the gateway placement algorithm optimized. To characterize the coverage of every LoRa nodes in the network, packet delivery ratio (PDR) for each node has been calculated. The extensive results obtained shows that as few as two gateways deployed in the network is sufficient to cover an approximately 10 km radius of a dense urban area.