LoRaWAN for Smart City IoT Deployments: A Long Term Evaluation

Area of Science:

• Internet of Things (IoT)
• Wireless Sensor Networks
• Environmental Monitoring

Background:

• Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies are crucial for scalable IoT deployments.
• LoRaWAN offers a promising solution for long-range, low-power communication in urban environments.
• The need for efficient data transmission from environmental sensors in smart cities is growing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the feasibility and performance of a city-scale LoRaWAN network deployment.
• To assess the suitability of LoRaWAN for supporting a network of air quality monitors.
• To explore the capabilities of LoRaWAN in a real-world smart city application.

Main Methods:

• Deployment of a city-scale LoRaWAN network in Southampton, UK.
• Utilized a combination of commercial off-the-shelf and custom LoRaWAN gateways.
• Gateway locations selected based on practical factors: network access, site permission, and accessibility.

Main Results:

• Over 135,000 messages transmitted by twenty analyzed devices.
• Achieved a successful message reception rate of 72.4% by the data server.
• 99% of successfully received messages were delivered within 10 seconds of transmission.

Conclusions:

• LoRaWAN is a viable and applicable communication technology for city-scale air quality monitoring.
• The deployment demonstrated the potential of LoRaWAN for various smart city applications.
• Practical deployment considerations, such as gateway placement, impact network performance.