LoRaWAN Metering Infrastructure Planning in Smart Cities

Abstract

The planning of metering network infrastructure based on the concept of the Internet of Things primarily involves the choice of available radio technology. Then, regardless of the type and availability of power sources, energy conservation should be one of the main optimization criteria. For this reason, LPWANs operating in unlicensed ISM bands appear to be a suitable solution in urban environments due to their sub 1 GHz propagation properties. High signal penetration and coverage make them applicable in urban areas with buildings and various obstacles. Therefore, this article presents solutions developed to support the planning process of implementing a LoRaWAN network infrastructure aimed at monitoring and collecting electricity meter data in smart cities. To this end, an algorithm has been proposed to support the selection of the number of LoRaWAN gateways and their deployment, as well as the selection of transmission parameters at the measurement nodes with a particular focus on geographic data from real maps.

Future Industrial Applications: Exploring LPWAN-Driven IoT Protocols

“…LoraWAN utilizes the Sub-Ghz ISM band [ 39 ]. A noteworthy drawback of LoRaWAN is that the data rate is low [ 40 ], thus catering to only some specific IoT applications. The ultra-low power consumption also means that only star topology can be implemented, where all the nodes send information to the central gateway, which communicates with LoRa servers [ 41 , 42 ].…”

“…Even though there is no significant dependency upon latency and jitter, in certain cases, the triggering factor is concurrent for many UE devices. LoRaWAN and Sigfox are acceptable solutions in this kind of scenario since they can cover large areas and a sizable number of user equipment at the cost of increased latency, collision, and jitter rates [ 25 , 31 , 40 , 71 ]. For example, Poddar et al [ 94 ] conducted a case study regarding intelligent city applications in Estonia.…”

Design and Evaluation of a Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN)-Based Emergency Response System for Individuals with Special Needs in Smart Buildings

“…Furthermore, forward error correction (FEC) is employed to enhance the receiver’s sensitivity. LoRa technology boasts an impressive range of 1–30 km across both land and sea [ 35 , 36 , 37 ]. LoRaWAN, an open standard network stack, capitalizes on the physical layer characteristics of LoRa.…”

Detection and Recognition of Voice Commands by a Distributed Acoustic Sensor Based on Phase-Sensitive OTDR in the Smart Home Concept

“…Smart homes, smart manufacturing, and even smart cities are increasingly becoming part of the lives of citizens in many countries worldwide [1][2][3]. Some use these technologies as luxury items, but for people with disabilities, these are a few ways to improve the quality of one's life to an acceptable level.…”