Trilateration-based Multi-hop for the Long Range Wide Area Network

TL;DR

This paper proposes a multi-hop approach for LoRaWAN using RSSI-based trilateration, demonstrating potential energy savings and reduced airtime through simulation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multi-hop method for LoRaWAN, including a trilateration algorithm and forwarding mechanism, which were not previously explored in this context.

Findings

Multi-hop reduces energy consumption in LoRaWAN.

The approach decreases Time on Air and TX power.

Simulation results validate the efficiency of the proposed method.

Abstract

Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) has an open specification that defines the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for LoRa networks, mainly based on pure-Aloha with beacon option. The LoRaWAN has a star of star topology where end-devices are directly linked to the gateway and up-link packets are primary traffic. This paper~contributes an approach of multi-hop in LoRaWAN. The potential benefits of multi-hop in LoRaWAN are investigated. A RSSI-based trilateration algorithm for graph construction is proposed. The shortest path for multi-hop and forwarding mechanism without local beacon is designed and implemented in simulation. This novel approach is tested in ns-3 simulator and different scenarios are run. Results indicate that multi-hop can decrease the energy consumption of LoRaWAN, by reducing Time on Air and TX power.