A Novel Beacon-Less MAC Protocol for Low-Power Industrial LoRa Networks

This article introduces a novel medium access control (MAC) protocol designed for battery-powered LoRa industrial networks, addressing the real-time communication and energy efficiency challenges faced by conventional LoRaWAN class B systems. The proposed MAC protocol operates without the need for beacon-based network synchronization, thereby enhancing the adaptability and responsiveness of the network to dynamic environmental conditions and real-time user commands. Through mathematical modeling, network simulations, and experiments, we have demonstrated that our MAC protocol significantly outperforms LoRaWAN class B in terms of the end node’s lifetime and packet delay. For example, under a given set of conditions with a packet arrival rate of 0.01 packets/s, node number of 6, and a battery energy of 3 Ah, our MAC protocol extends end node’s lifetime from 430 to 913 days with the setting of LoRa spreading factor of 7, and reduces the packet delay from 4 to 0.18 s, thus showcasing substantial improvements in critical performance metrics essential for the scalability and efficiency of the industrial Internet of Things applications.