PhD Forum: LoRaWAN networks evaluation through extensive ns-3 simulations

In Internet of Things (IoT) applications, hundreds of sensors collect and transmit data to a central gateway, allowing applications such as smart cities, smart home, and smart agriculture. Scalability and energy efficiency are two common requirements for this type of IoT systems that can be tackled by providing the sensor nodes with energy harvesting capabilities, so that they can operate even without batteries, exploiting the renewable energy sources, with a dramatic reduction in the manufacturing, management, and decommissioning costs. In this work, we outline our approach for network-wide and energy-aware performance optimization of energy harvesting IoT networks employing LoRaWAN, one of the most widespread technologies for the IoT. We describe a viable method to enable more efficient energy-aware operations on battery-less IoT devices, presenting promising preliminary results.