Internet of Things Technology based on LoRaWAN Revolution

Abstract

With the rapid growth of the internet of Things (IoT) paradigm, another important technology appears on the research field that helps in earning a high performance wireless communication between devices, it is called low power wide area network (LPWAN). In the LPWAN technology, there are two categories: Long Rang (LoRa) and narrowband (NB-IoT). LoRa is not only a long-range network; it is also enables the transfer of information with a low transfer rate and low power consumption. Additionally, LoRa wireless area network (LoRaWAN) is a promising technology developed to overcome the IoT applications challenges. In this paper, the main contribution is focus on the revolution of LoRaWAN network technology considering the IoT requirements. Moreover, we show how this revolution is a powerful candidate in addressing and fixing the IoT challenges and obstacles. Finally, we present how LoRaWAN can handle these problems supporting our discussion with the details of the LoRaWAN characteristics.

Full text

Internet of Things Technology based on LoRaWAN
Revolution
Dina M. Ibrahim
Assistant Professor, Information Technology Dept.
College of Computer, Qassim University
Buraidah, KSA
Email: d.hussein@qu.edu.sa
Abstract—With the rapid growth of the internet of Things
(IoT) paradigm, another important technology appears on the
research field that helps in earning a high performance
wireless communication between devices, it is called low power
wide area network (LPWAN). In the LPWAN technology,
there are two categories: Long Rang (LoRa) and narrowband
(NB-IoT). LoRa is not only a long-range network; it is also
enables the transfer of information with a low transfer rate
and low power consumption. Additionally, LoRa wireless area
network (LoRaWAN) is a promising technology developed to
overcome the IoT applications challenges. In this paper, the
main contribution is focus on the revolution of LoRaWAN
network technology considering the IoT requirements.
Moreover, we show how this revolution is a powerful candidate
in addressing and fixing the IoT challenges and obstacles.
Finally, we present how LoRaWAN can handle these problems
supporting our discussion with the details of the LoRaWAN
characteristics.
Keywords—Internet of Things (IoT), LPWAN, LoRa,
LoRaWAN
I. I
NTRODUCTION
The near future depends entirely on what is known as
Internet of Things (IoT). It aims to give anything around you
the ability to connect to the Internet and definitely
communicate with other things [1]. In recent years, there
have been many researches on IoT, which has led to its
improvement and development. For example, the spread of
new eras of Smart Cities, Smart Homes, Smart
Transportation, …etc. [2], as shown in Fig. 1.
IoT is an ongoing development of Internet by which
every day and everywhere things and objects have
capabilities of data communication. The proliferation of this
intelligent interconnectivity between the real world and the
digital one makes the term of IoT completely different from
the Internet. This variance is the absence of Human role.
Fig. 1. Internet of Things (IoT) environment and the Internet [2]
Nowadays, traditional wireless networks technologies are
not considered as a best convenient network especially for
the low mobility communication devices those rarely
transmitting short messages in the IoT concept [3]. For this
reason, the so-called low power wide area network
(LPWAN) is designed to achieve the need for low power,
long-range, low bit error rate, and low cost.
Due to the gap between: (i) cellular networks, like GSM,
UMTS, and LTE, and (ii) short range networks, like Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth and ZigBee. There is a growing need to design
LPWAN technologies to fill this gap and to achieve the
requirements of the IoT devices and applications. Although
IoTs include many engaged battery and earned energy
devices but LPWAN can enhance the efficiency of IoT
devices since it has inexpensive low-power transceivers
operates for long durations [4]. The Long Range network
protocol (LoRaWAN) protocol is a LPWAN category that
includes some charged battery devices for establishing the
bidirectional communication [5]. The LoRaWAN
specification confirms the perfect integration between the
IoT objects, without the need for complex local
employments.
This paper is organized as follows: after this
introduction, Section II discussed an overview on
LoRaWAN Technology. Section III addresses the
challenges solved by LoRaWAN. Finally, in Section IV, we
draw the conclusion.
II. L
O
R
A
WAN
O
VERVIEW
Wireless technologies can be classified based on their
range into four ranges, Figure 2 presents the classification of
wireless technologies based on their range. The first is the
contact range, which is proximity and have a range of 0-to-
10 meters, like RFID technology [6].
The second is the short range that known as wireless
personal area network (WPAN) with range from 10-to-100
meters, such as Bluetooth and ZigBee technologies. The
third is the short/medium range, which identified as wireless
local area network (WLAN) with 100-to-1000 meters’ range,
like Wi-Fi networks [6, 7]. Finally, the long range that is our
goal and well known by wireless wide area network
(WWAN) with range up to 100 km, like cellular and
LPWAN. LPWAN technology is one of the most popular
techniques used in WWAN networks. In more deep,
LoRaWAN protocol, which based on LoRa technology, is
the most common low power with long-range network that is
convenient with the current and future age, the IoT era.
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Fig. 2. Classification of wireless technologies based on range [5].
A. LoRaWAN Network Architecture
The majority of LPWAN networks use the star network
topology. Its nature is identified based on one central node,
acts as gateway, and connects with all the other connected
devices [6]. On the other hand, the mesh network topology
consists of individual nodes that propagate data to the other
nodes to raise the range of communication.
The implementation of LoRaWAN network is based on
the star network topology, and mostly, stars-of-stars network.
The benefits of using star topology is preserving battery life
and decreasing the complexity of the network meanwhile the
nodes do not have to propagate or forward other nodes data,
the nodes receives only its own data. Figure 3 illustrates the
architecture of LoRaWAN, which can be divide into front-
end and back-end parts [5, 8]. The front-end part contains
gateway elements and the end nodes. While the back-end
part contains the network servers that is responsible for
checking security, storing the received information, filtering
duplicate packets, and scheduling acknowledgements
through the gateway [9].
Fig. 3. LoRaWAN Architecture [8].
LoRaWAN end-node devices have three modes of
operation, depending on the communication tool employed:
Class A (the default), Class B, and Class C (both optional)
[10]. These three modes describe how the end-node device
can access to a wireless network. Class A focuses on the
upward traffic between the end-node device and the network
server, moreover, it allows bidirectional communication.
Class B and C improving the downward traffice from the
network server to the end-node device by using optional
features. The currently reasearches are looking forward to
improve the perfomance of these classes epecially in saving
battery lifetime and in the packet delivery rate [8].
B. Why LoRaWAN
There are many other LPWAN technologies related to
IoT Communication technologies, which have the same
specification like LoRaWAN. One of these technologies is
the so-called Sigfox protocol [11], Sigfox coverage area is
better than LoRaWAN, besides, it is looking to increase the
worldwide. The reason that makes LoRaWAN better than
Sigfox is mostly that it is open protocol. Another example is
narrow-band (NB-IoT) protocol technology, which have
many features as LoRaWAN like, high frequency band. but,
NB-IoT is not open protocol unlike LoRaWAN [12].
LoRaWAN has also other advantages not included in
NB-IoT including bandwidth scalability, increased power
efficiency, and adaptive data rate. More protocol examples
are similarly on the field as Weightless, NWAVE, OnRamp
wireless, IEEE802.11ah and Dash7 [1, 11, 13, 14], Fig. 4
shows the most commonly LPWAN technologies.
Fig. 4. Low Power WAN (LPWAN) Technologies.
III. C
HALLENGES
S
OLVED BY
L
O
R
A
WAN
In this Section, we concentrate on the challenges and
obstacles faces the wireless sensor network (WSN) in
general and the IoT specifically. Then, how can the
revolution of LoRaWAN technology dissolve all of them.
A. Challenges and Limitations faced WSN
Wireless sensor networks (WSN) field faced some
challenges and limitations are [5]:
• Many difficulties when participating a great
number of sensors;
• Appearance of low efficiency and other issues due
to the overcrowded state of Radio Frequency (RF)
environment;
• The nonexistence of the mathematical models that
help in simulating a huge number of nodes in
WSN;
• The current simulators used for WSN are limited
and inadequate for scalability concerns.
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B. Challenges and obstacles faced IoT
Most existing available communicating protocols cannot
have handled the challenges and obstacles of IoTs. In this
Subsection, we focus on them.
1) The popular challenges:
Here, the common popular IoTs challenges that stuck the
performance and the development of such technology [15],
these challenges are:
a) Battery life: most of the electronics in the IoT get
their power from some non-rechargeable batteries.
This is due to the cost, convenience, and
availability as well.
b) Range: one of the new technologies goals is to
provide information access to the Internet for
users, devices, or things away from the city. In
order to increase the range, the power should be
high.
c) Bandwidth and Data Rate: are used for
determining the amount of data being transferred
in the network with in a given time. If the
bandwidth increased the data rate will be also
increased.
d) Latency: it means how to engage limited resources
to cover and serve different types of traffic flow
under different environments.
2) The popular obstacles:
In this part, we collect the common obstacles that should
be handled for IoT [16]. These obstacles contain
Connectivity, Efficient energy management, Security,
Complexity, and fast-paced development, a brief description
for them are:
a) Connectivity: due to the variety of environment,
one of the most important issue is to ensure the
interconnectivity between different devices
residing in different circumstances.
b) Efficient energy management: since most of the
devices cost are not high, but at the same time, it
is not efficient to replace the battery from time to
other. Therefore, there is a growing need to
improve the energy harvesting.
c) Security: definitely earning high security in one
of the most issues that should not be neglected
and should be taken into consideration. Thus,
effective encryption and authentications protocols
needed to be developed, especially with using the
WSN resources.
d) Complexity: one of the highly complex task is to
integrate between different interconnectivity
capabilities. It is important to discover new
methods increase the usability of these skills.
e) Fast-paced development: everyday and
everywhere hundreds of new devices added to the
extraordinary IoT world. The rapid increase of
the number of IoT nodes will increase its
complexity as well.
With the proliferation of IoT devices and applications
like, smart power grid, e-Learning, Smart cities, Healthcare,
and environment protection, the revolution of the LoRaWAN
technology is a powerful solution in order to help in dissolve
all the previous challenges and obstacles. Table I represents
the characteristics with description in LoRaWAN.
TABLE I. L
O
R
A
WAN
C
HARACTERISTICS AND
D
ESCRIPTIONS
Feature LoRaWAN Description
Quality of Service
(QoS)
• LoRaWAN is an asynchronous protocol used
unlicensed spectrum [16].
• Its modulation is based on the Chirp-Spread
Spectrum (CSS) modulation technique that
can handle the interference, the multipath,
and the fading problems [17].
Flexibility
• LoRaWAN is an unlicensed open protocol.
• Has flexible solutions that increase its data
rate adaptation [18].
• Bandwidth scalable with establishing bi-
directional communication
Power Consumption
• Because LoRaWAN is an asynchronous
protocol, the end node devices can sleep for
small or large amount of time, as the
application device desires [12].
• Maximum lifetime
• It is a best choice for applications devices
that require low latency with data rate [19].
• Increase battery life and latency.
• Low power operation
Network Coverage/
Range
• The usage of star topology make it deep in
indoor and outdoor coverage areas [16].
• Long range communication that is longer
than cellular networks.
• A whoke city can be covered by using one
gateway in the LoRaWAN network [20].
• This technology reaches greater distances
with low energy consumption.
Cost Policy
• Minumal infrastructure with low cost devices
till end nodes.
• Suitable for users and can be applied to
decrease cost network deployment [5].
• In general, LoRaWAN is considered to
support low cost in different aspect: spectrum
cost, network cost, deployment cost, and end
node device cost [16].
Deployment
• Easy to deploy network infrastrutcure
countrywide [1].
• Existing cellular networks can be easily
upgraded and reused.
Scalability
• The number of IoT devices keeps on
increasing exponintially and LoRaWAN star
network topolgy can dissolve this increasing
perfectly [21].
• LoRaWAN is high scalable since a single
gateway can support hundreds or thousande
of end node devices assuming that the traffic
load of each node device is low [15].
Throughput
• LoRaWAN network performance could be
improved by increasing the number of sub-
bands that increases the overall duty cycle
[10].
• LoRawan provides throughput higher than
the the other technologies with low
complexity [22].
Security
• This feature is enormously important for the
future of IoT networkssince it will certify the
operation of the device without any
interruption [23].
• Uses encryption algorithms that provides a
high level of security.
• LoRaWAN provides two layers for security:
one for the network and the other for the
applications.
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From the literatures, we collected as much as found, the
most important features and characteristics and presenting
them in Table I. We classify these features into categories
that contains and provide the common characteristics. The
classification elements are Quality of Service (QoS),
Flexibility, Power Consumption, Network Coverage, Cost
Policy, Deployment, Scalability, Throughput, and Security.
All of these characteristics influence on the performance of
IoT technology because most of them are important factors.
IV. C
ONCLUTION
In recent years there have been many researches on the
development of IoT, which has led to its improvement. With
the rapid increase of IoT devices and applications like, smart
power grid, e-Learning, Smart cities, Healthcare, and
environment protection, the revolution of the LoRaWAN
technology is a powerful solution in order to help in solving
the IoT challenges and obstacles. The details of LoRaWAN
characteristics were illustrated and we conclude that
LoRaWAN network technology has a powerful imprint in
improving the near future IoTs devices and networks hence it
has some excellent characteristics like, High QoS,
Flexibility, Deployment, Scalability, Throughput, and
Security. Finally, we can consider LoRaWAN as a revolution
created for IoTs world.
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