MBMD-LoRa Scalable LoRaWAN for Internet of Things: A Multi-band Multi-data Rate Approach

Internet of things based applications are increasingly adopting low-power wide area network (LPWAN) technologies because they provide extensive coverage to many battery-powered devices. Due to its physical layer architecture and regulatory benefits, long-range wide area network (LoRaWAN) has become the most extensively adopted LPWAN solution which enables a new multiband technology. LoRaWAN unequivocally employs the ALOHA medium access control (MAC) protocol, resulting in a substantial reduction in the packet delivery rate, particularly in high-density networks where end devices (EDs) access the network randomly. This significantly and adversely affects the overall network performance. However, its scalability performance with simultaneous impact of multi-bandwidth approach has not yet been adequately investigated. This paper proposes a Multi-Band Multi-Data Rate (MBMD-LoRa) framework for enabling an scalabe LoRaWAN IoT use cases. Firstly, a system model for LoRaWAN is presented focusing on link, propagation and simulation scenarios of the framework. Secondly, the slim data rate, MBMD algorithm, and its zone-based implementation are presented detailing the framework. The comparative performance evaluation of the proposed framework attests to potential benefits considering several metrics related to the scalability of LoRAWAN for emerging IoT use cases.