WIP: Collaborative Approaches to Mitigate Links of Variable Quality in LoRa Networks

Abstract

LoRa has become a de-facto standard for long-range communication networks with low data rate requirements. Despite the robustness of its employed chirp spread spectrum modulation, however, LoRa links covering long distances can be prone to errors and losses. A common reaction to such link conditions is to increase the symbol durations and thus their chance of a correct reception. In this paper, we follow an alternative approach to mitigate lossy links by adding redundant information to LoRa transmissions. We investigate the potentials of both local and collaborative methods to increase the network’s overall data delivery. By means of simulation studies and a practical evaluation, for which we have implemented the designed techniques on actual LoRa hardware devices, we show that significant improvements are possible in a real-world deployment.