On LoRaWAN scalability: Empirical evaluation of susceptibility to inter-network interference

Appearing on the stage quite recently, the Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) are currently getting much of attention. In the current paper we study the susceptibility of one LPWAN technology, namely LoRaWAN, to the inter-network interferences. By means of excessive empirical measurements employing the certified commercial transceivers, we characterize the effect of modulation coding schemes (known for LoRaWAN as data rates (DRs)) of a transmitter and an interferer on probability of successful packet delivery while operating in EU 868 MHz band. We show that in reality the transmissions with different DRs in the same frequency channel can negatively affect each other and that the high DRs are influenced by interferences more severely than the low ones. Also, we show that the LoRa-modulated DRs are affected by the interferences much less than the FSK-modulated one. Importantly, the presented results provide insight into the network-level operation of the LoRa LPWAN technology in general, and its scalability potential in particular. The results can also be used as a reference for simulations and analyses or for defining the communication parameters for real-life applications.