LoRa Communication Evaluation Based Building Density in Ankara City

Communication of things is one of the important research topics open to development today. The emergence of the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) has accelerated with the needs of things; to operate on remotely, to collect data from objects, to transmit collected data to servers or applications, and to process data. Wi-Fi and cellular network technologies are currently used for the IoT but they consume high power. Bluetooth, Zigbee and Z-Wave wireless technologies consume low power and are effective at short-range. However, Low Power Wireless Access Network (LPWAN) has become a good research area as low power consuming technologies in long distance for the communication of objects. LoRa is a long range and low power LPWAN technology develop by Semtech. In this paper, the principle of LoRa is explained and the results of the communication test with two LoRa modules carried out in a rainy weather of Ankara city are presented. In the test, the first LoRa module is placed inside the car and then the car travels around the city on certain routes according to the building densities. The first LoRa module in the vehicle sends data to the second LoRa module placed in the home environment. For each sending data the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) value is measured. The results show that data transmission with LoRa devices varies according to the density of buildings in the city and LoRa modules can communicate with each other at a distance of up to 1 km. Overall, as the distance and the number of buildings between the locations of the receiver and transmitter LoRa modules increase, data transmission rate decreases and data loss occurs.