Duty Cycle Compatible Fresh Data Tranmission with LoRa

Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) using the ISM band are constrained by serious duty-cycle limitations in Europe and in various other parts of the world. This constraint particularly limits the freshness of IoT data that can be conveyed using these networks. Earlier literature introduced the DutyCycle Compliant Threshold ALOHA (DCCTA), that aims to optimize the age of information (AoI) in a duty-cycle constrained LPWAN setting. In this paper, we report on the implementation of a system where end nodes use DCCTA and LoRa-enabled end nodes. A custom gateway is implemented, to evaluate the performance of our protocol under two cases: end nodes receive or do not receive packet success feedback from the gateway. Measurement and simulation results both reveal that under dutycycle constraints, skipping the feedback achieves significantly better efficiency and data freshness. Our findings, grounded in both simulation and practical implementation, underscore the potential of our protocol in reducing AoI under stringent dutycycle regulations.