Study of Communication Reliability Improvement using Multi-channel Communication for LoRa

We have developed a bus location system called the “BusDoko” that presents the current bus location. In the system, GPS and mobile cellular system or LoRa are used to collect real-time location information from running vehicles. In order to operate the bus location system only with LoRa, it is necessary to improve the reliability of the LoRa communication system. We decided to install a device with two LoRa modules on one bus and increase reliability by transmitting the position of the bus to the gateway using two channels. We also propose a method of sharing one channel with multiple buses using the TDMA method. This has succeeded in effectively using the channel and increasing reliability. In this paper, we will show the details of the proposed method and the experimental results on the bus route. We also report on its effectiveness against communication interference.