On Superior Reliability of Effective Signal Power versus RSSI in LoRaWAN

With the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT), it is critical to understand the packet transmission performance in Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN), especially LoRaWAN. Previous works on LoRaWAN network performance analysis, either simulation-based or field measurement, are considering the Packet Delivery Rate (PDR) as a major measure of the network performance and its dependency on the signal impairments. However, the Effective Signal Power (ESP) and its huge variability along with the different frequency bands, for each location, are not generally considered. In this paper, an in-depth investigation of the frequency dependency of the PDR is done by performing an outdoor measurement campaign in the area of the Campus Beaulieu in Rennes. From each different location, the ESP and SINR (Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio) values are obtained as well as the influence of these parameters on the PDR is evaluated at each frequency band independently. In the given results, the feasibility of using the ESP is proven by its enlarged range when the SINR is very low, unlike the RSSI which has a limitation. This investigation manifests and gives important guidelines for using ESP in the future IoT applications.