Feasibility test on the performance of LoRa technology incorporated in the wireless sensor network

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are developed rapidly in many implementations such as smart cities, smart offices, and smart transportations. They are closely related to communication technology which requires efficient power and covered long distance. To overcome these two problems, this paper proposes the design of a communication system for WSN using LoRa technology that has the ability to receiving lower power and wider area coverage. In this research, the implementation of this communication design is just a prototype that contains two nodes that communicate with each other by using LoRa technology as a communication system. The experiment which was based on measurement had the maximum distance of a point to point communication that reached about 200 m while the lowest received power was accounted at -98 dB. The use of the best spreading factor based on simulation was recorded at 7 using a bandwidth of 250 kbps and 10 using a bandwidth of 125 kbps. Showing the result, it can be concluded that 200 m was the longest distance which can be achieved by this prototype and this was useful for a small system.