Assessing the Impact of Mobility on LoRa Communications

Abstract

The use of LPWAN (Low Powered Wide Area Network) technologies in the scope of the Internet of Things have become the best alternative to send data between devices and cloud systems. Among these technologies, LoRa stands out as a novel and promising system that could be used in areas with a high device density, and in locations where other technologies do not provide enough communications range. In the past, most research works have made experiments in static scenarios, without taking the mobility of the things into account. Our research is focused in analyzing the impact that mobility will have in LoRa communications performance, with the objective to determine the adequacy of this technology for vehicular scenarios oriented to data sensing, or in applications where small pieces of data are transmitted over long distances. Experimental results show that both the mobility and the message size affect LoRa communications, despite still allowing to reach an acceptable coverage range.