Scalability performance for low power wide area network technology using multiple gateways

Abstract

Low Power Wide Area Network is one of the leading technologies for the Internet of Things. The capability to scale is one of the advantage criteria for a technology to compare to each other. The technology uses a star network topology for communication between the end-node and gateway. The star network topology enables the network to support a large number of end-nodes and with multiple of gateways deployed in the network, it can increase the number of end nodes even more. This paper aims to investigate the performance of the Low Power Wide Area Network Technology, focusing on the capability of the network to scale using multiple gateways as receivers. We model the network system based on the communication behaviours between the end-node and gateways. We also included the communication limit range for the data signal from the end-node to successfully be received by the gateways. The performance of the scalability for the Low Power Wide Area Network Technology is shown by the successfully received packet data at the gateways. The simulation to study the scalability was done based on several parameters, such as the number of end-nodes, gateways, channels and also application time. The results show that the amount of successfully received data signal at gateway increased as the gateways, application time and channel used increased.