Aggressive Fragmentation Strategy for Enhanced Network Performance in Dense LPWANs

Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) are gaining ground in the IoT landscape and, in particular, for Industrial IoT applications. However, given the strict duty cycle restrictions (e.g. 1% in SubGHz bands) and the limited power supply of devices, requirements of some applications can not always be met. This paper analyzes the potential of the combination of packet fragmentation -in the direction of the IETF LPWAN working group- and negative group acknowledgement (NACK) in LoRaWAN networks, a widespread LPWAN technology. Results show that the proposed strategy can lead to significant gains in terms of goodput and energy efficiency under congested situations.