Outdoor Ranging and Positioning based on LoRa Modulation

We present results for outdoor ranging and positioning based on the Long-Range (LoRa) modulation, which is a widespread wireless IoT technology. LoRa systems typically operate in sub-GHz frequency bands with only 125 kHz bandwidth, which restricts the ranging performance due to the limited temporal resolution. The investigated LoRa ranging method operates in the 2.4 GHz ISM frequency band and supports wider bandwidths, achieving for outdoor ranging a mean distance error below 50 m over distances of up to 1400 m. Positioning based on LoRa ranging obtained a measured Distance Root Mean Square (DRMS) error of 30 m, which reduced to 5 m for tracking of a mobile node, making it a suitable method for approximate outdoor positioning and tracking of IoT devices without using Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS).