Trace-Driven Simulation for LoRaWan868 MHz Propagation in an Urban Scenario

Abstract

Long-range, low-power wide area network (Lo-Ra WAN) is a very scalable solution for the Internet of Things (IoT). Performance evaluation of LoRaWAN in Urban environments is a challenging task. Theoretical modeling results have been inaccurate. In this paper, a trace-driven simulation for LoRaWAN 868 MHz propagation was performed using GPS data and their corresponding LoRaWanreceived signal level. The dataset has been extracted from 5015 datasets of LoRaWAN measurements taken from Glasgow city center. ICS-Telecom was used to simulate the real-world urban environment. Comparison of trace-simulated results and the real-world data is performed to evaluate the prediction accuracy of Deygout 94, ITU-R 525/526 and COST-Walfish Ikegami (COST-WI) propagation models. All models over-estimated LoRaWAN trace-simulated received signal strength (RSS) levels in comparison to real-world collected samples. While Deygout 94 prediction accuracy was higher with mean absolute error (MAE) at 0.83 dBm and standard deviation (SD) at 4.17 dBm, COST-WI performed poorly with MAE and SD at 2.87 dBm and 10.96 dBm respectively.