Impact of Spreading Factor on LoRaWAN Propagation in a Metropolitan Environment

A practical investigation of LoRaWAN’s (longrange wide area network) propagation in an urban and semiurban environment is demonstrated and analyzed in this article. Measured data is analyzed to understand the attributes of LoRa, including: effective propagation range, chirp spread spectrum (CSS) modulation and spreading factor (SF). This analysis provides a better understanding of these attributes. In addition, a comparison was made with propagation models to benchmark and observe the impact of clutter, environment and structures in practice. For this purpose, log-distance, COST.W.I models were used. An average increase of 5.5 dB was observed on the received signal strength due to a higher spreading factor. This translated into a range extension of approximately 500 m in practice. Outcome of this study provides an insight of LoRa’s propagation in metropolitan environments, and facilitates the network planning in similar scenarios.