Fair Adaptive Data Rate Allocation and Power Control in LoRaWAN

TL;DR

This paper investigates fairness in data rate allocation and power control in LoRaWAN, proposing algorithms to improve fairness and demonstrating their effectiveness through simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel data rate ratio derivation and a power control algorithm to enhance fairness in LoRaWAN networks.

Findings

Improved fairness in data rate distribution.

Enhanced signal power balancing across nodes.

Simulation results outperform existing methods.

Abstract

In this paper, we present results of a study of the data rate fairness among nodes within a LoRaWAN cell. Since LoRa/LoRaWAN supports various data rates, we firstly derive the fairest ratios of deploying each data rate within a cell for a fair collision probability. LoRa/LoRaWAN, like other frequency modulation based radio interfaces, exhibits the \textit{capture effect} in which only the stronger signal of colliding signals will be extracted. This leads to unfairness, where far nodes or nodes experiencing higher attenuation are less likely to see their packets received correctly. Therefore, we secondly develop a transmission power control algorithm to balance the received signal powers from all nodes regardless of their distances from the gateway for a fair data extraction. Simulations show that our approach achieves higher fairness in data rate than the state-of-art in almost all network configurations.