Remote Monitoring of IoT Sensors and Communication Link Quality in Multisite mMTC Testbed

Massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC) technologies are key to addressing communication requirements of various emerging IoT applications. In this work, a multisite mMTC test network is designed and implemented in order to investigate the long-term communication quality and sensor data of LoRa and NB-IoT. This is essential for remote network maintenance operations, because it allows distinguishing communication quality defects from software/hardware failures. Moreover, it provides additional information about the communication link quality for network management. The test network is geographically scattered over a large area in Finland and experimented both in private and public networks. Measurements on LoRaWAN test networks revealed that higher SNRs and RSSIs are generally achieved for devices with lower spreading factors. Comparison of NB-IoT and LoRaWAN shows that NB-IoT has better communication quality performance. Overall, this paper provides first long-term multi-site and multi-technology mMTC measurements and corresponding performance analysis that are not available in the existing literature.