EXpLoRa - EXperimenting with LoRa products across realistic environments

LoRa has gained significant momentum among industrial and research communities, with several device manufacturers adopting the LoRa technology in their IoT solutions. However, in spite of LoRa’s wide penetration, the resulting performance under realistic conditions and real-life scenarios has only recently been considered and mainly under line-of-sight environments. For instance, issues like communication across multiple floors and the performance degradation impact of interference have not been analyzed in detail. In the EXpLoRa proposal, we aim to answer the previously identified inquiries from the side of a technology adopter company, namely domX SME, which develops custom IoT monitoring solutions and considers the adoption of LoRa technology for covering the company’s needs. Through the EXpLoRa experiment, we managed to collect a first set of experimental data and familiarize with the LoRa technology and conduct an exhaustive set of experiments with LoRa-compatible devices, under realistic city-scale and varying channel conditions (range of ~35 dB, LOS/ NLOS). For the purposes of our experiment, NITOS testbed provided full access to 12 LoRa nodes and one LoRa Gateway with an additional Monitor interface to capture the prevailing channel occupancy. The set of conducted experiments employed all 12 LoRa end nodes, the 8 available channels, 3 different transmission power levels (0,7,14 dBm), 10 Transmission modes (modulation settings) and multiple payload sizes. In total, more than 100K LoRa packets were transmitted and analysed within the RSSI range of -102 and -137 dBm.LoRa技术已在工业界与科研界获得广泛关注与长足发展，多家设备制造商已将LoRa技术集成至其物联网（IoT, Internet of Things）解决方案中。尽管LoRa技术已实现大规模普及，但其在真实环境与实际应用场景下的性能表现直至近年才得到关注，且相关研究多集中于视距（LOS, Line-of-Sight）通信场景。诸如跨楼层通信、干扰对性能衰减的影响等关键问题，尚未得到详细分析。在本EXpLoRa研究方案中，我们旨在从技术采用方企业domX SME的视角解答上述已识别的研究问题——domX SME是一家专注于定制化物联网监测解决方案开发、并考虑采用LoRa技术以满足自身业务需求的中小型企业（SME, Small and Medium-sized Enterprise）。通过EXpLoRa实验，我们采集了首批实验数据集，初步熟悉并掌握了LoRa技术的应用细节，并基于兼容LoRa的设备在真实城市场景与动态变化的信道条件下开展了全面系统的实验：信道状态动态范围约35 dB，涵盖视距与非视距（NLOS, Non-Line-of-Sight）两种场景。本次实验依托NITOS实验床，可使用12个LoRa终端节点与1个LoRa网关，并通过额外的监控接口捕获当前的信道占用情况。实验共使用全部12个LoRa终端节点、8个可用信道、3种不同发射功率等级（0、7、14 dBm）、10种传输模式（调制配置）以及多种有效载荷尺寸。本次实验累计传输并分析了超过10万个LoRa数据包，接收信号强度指示（RSSI, Received Signal Strength Indicator）范围为-102至-137 dBm。