When Renewable Energy Meets LoRa: A Feasibility Analysis on Cable-Less Deployments

This paper focuses on Long Range Wide Area Networks (LoRaWAN) and sheds some light on the feasibility of fully cable-less Internet of Things deployments, where dual-radio gateways are fed by a photovoltaic plant and equipped with a wireless backhaul. As a first step, the power needs of a dual-radio gateway, serving a mix of realistic machine-to-machine applications and leveraging different combinations of front-end chipsets and backhaul wireless technologies, are investigated. Then, the achieved results are properly employed to size the PV plant, as well as to estimate its installation costs and land acquisition. Finally, cost-saving and carbon footprints analysis is presented to demonstrate the socio-economic benefits arising out of these cable-less deployments for LoRaWANs. The conducted study clearly exhibits that network operators can achieve their break-even point during the early stages after the deployment, while adopting environment-friendly approaches because of carbon emission savings achieved by renewable energy.