Performance Analysis of Different LoRaWAN Frequency Bands for mMTC Scenarios

Abstract

The possibility of utilizing different frequencies for the LoRaWAN is a key component which, together with the other parameters, i.e., (i) bandwidth, (ii) spreading factor, (iii) coding rate, and (iv) transmission power, defines the communication performance. In this paper, we present the substantive im- provements for both the end devices and the radio access network (gateways) to enhance the data rates and decrease the communication latency. The implementation changes were made for the publicly available LoRaWAN module “signetlabdei” for Network Simulator 3. Utilizing the frequency 2.4GHz, the transmission time in the LoRaWAN network has improved by 80 % decreasing from 75 ms to 14 ms. The frequency 2.4 GHz for the EU region also showed the best performance due to the extended bandwidth (transmission success above 90%) in the case of the mMTC scenario with thousands of devices deployed. Together with the updated LoRaWAN module, the reported results are expected to serve as a building block for mMTC- oriented simulation scenarios.