Channel characterisation for wearable LoRaWAN monitors

This paper presents the results of a campaign to investigate the empirical characterisation and mathematic modelling of the radio channel for a body-centric LoRaWAN transceiver for various operating distances across various environments including urban, suburban, and rural. The radio channel for a wearable LoRa transceiver device was explored, as well as anechoic measurements to understand the effects of body-shadowing for this technology. Results indicate that the best fit model for all recorded received signal strength measurements (using the Akaike information criterion) is the Nakagami distribution with mu = 0.52 and Ω = 662.13. Anechoic measurements indicated typical additional effects regarding the orientation of the user with respect to the gateway location. This work highlights LoRaWAN as a credible wearable wireless technology.