A Low-Complexity Demodulation for Oversampled LoRa Signal

Abstract

This paper deals with a method of demodulation for oversampled LoRa signal. The usual maximum likelihood (ML) based demodulation method for LoRa chirp spread spectrum (CSS) waveform is dedicated to signals sampled at Nyquist rate, whereas considering oversampled signals may improve the performance of the LoRa demodulation process. In this respect, when an oversampling rate (OSR) 2 is assumed, the method suggested in this paper consists in applying two demodulation processes to the even and odd samples of the oversampled LoRa signal, and then combining the results. This principle is then generalized to any OSR, and we show that the complexity of the method is low since it only involves discrete Fourier transforms (DFT). Moreover, a performance analysis in terms of symbol and bit error rate (SER and BER) is presented considering both additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh channel models. Simulations show the relevance of the method and the performance analysis as a gain of 3 dB is achieved by the demodulation at OSR 2 compared with OSR 1.