Experiences from Using LoRa and IEEE 802.15.4 for IoT-Enabled Classrooms

Abstract

Several networking technologies targeting the IoT application space currently compete within the smart city domain, both in outdoor and indoor deployments. However, up till now, there is no clear winner, and results from real-world deployments have only recently started to surface. In this paper, we present a comparative study of 2 popular IoT networking technologies, LoRa and IEEE 802.15.4, within the context of a research-oriented IoT deployment inside school buildings in Europe, targeting energy efficiency in education. We evaluate the actual performance of these two technologies in real-world settings, presenting a comparative study on the effect of parameters like the built environment, network quality, or data rate. Our results indicate that both technologies have their advantages, and while in certain cases both are perfectly adequate, in our use case LoRa exhibits a more robust behavior. Moreover, LoRa's characteristics make it a very good choice for indoor IoT deployments such as in educational buildings, and especially in cases where there are low bandwidth requirements. Keywords: IoT • LoRa • IEEE 802.15.4 • Educational buildings • Real-world deployment • LPWAN • Evaluation L. Pocero and S. Tsampas have contributed equally to this publication.

A Comparative Study of LoRa and IEEE 802.15.4-Based IoT Deployments Inside School Buildings

“…Regarding our own previous work, the design and implementation of the cloud-based aspects of the project are discussed in detail in [47], while its open source hardware aspects are discussed in [48]. In [49], we presented some preliminary results related to the aspects presented in this work. Having presented this initial set of results, we present here a greatly evolved version of that work, crucially providing a straight comparison between the two technologies in the same location simultaneously, as well as discussing the dataset produced by our IoT installations that is utilized in this work and offering it publicly to the community.…”