Occupancy-balancing downlink transmission for enhancing scalability of LoRa networks

Abstract

LoRa/LoRaWAN is growing rapidly as an underlying technology for the Internet of Things because of its long-range connectivity and low power. However, its limited scalability, owing to spread spectrum–based modulation and contention-based medium access control, impedes its use in emerging massive applications. In this study, we propose a downlink transmission scheme for enhancing the scalability of LoRa networks. The proposed scheme consists of two mechanisms. First, a modulation parameter is adjusted using the different transmission power limitations between the gateways and end devices to reduce downlink duration. Second, the timing of downlink traffic is selected based on uplink traffic concentration analysis. The proposed scheme reduces the uplink failure, and consequently, allows more end devices to participate in the network. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme is superior to the standard protocol in terms of the packet delivery ratio.