Study on the feasibility of LoRaWAN for smart city applications

Recent research on Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies which provide the capability of serving massive low power devices simultaneously has been very attractive. The LoRaWAN standard is one of the most successful developments. Commercial pilots are seen in many countries around the world. However, the feasibility of large scale deployments, for example, for smart city applications need to be further investigated. This paper provides a comprehensive case study of LoRaWAN to show the feasibility, scalability, and reliability of LoRaWAN in realistic simulated scenarios, from both technical and economic perspectives. We develop a Matlab based LoRaWAN simulator to offer a software approach of performance evaluation. A practical LoRaWAN network covering Greater London area is implemented. Its performance is evaluated based on two typical city monitoring applications. We further present an economic analysis and develop business models for such networks, in order to provide a guideline for commercial network operators, IoT vendors, and city planners to investigate future deployments of LoRaWAN for smart city applications.