Experiences from Using LoRa and IEEE 802.15.4 for IoT-enabled Classrooms

TL;DR

This study compares LoRa and IEEE 802.15.4 for IoT in school buildings, showing LoRa's robustness and suitability for indoor, low-bandwidth educational IoT deployments based on real-world performance data.

Contribution

It provides the first real-world comparative analysis of LoRa and IEEE 802.15.4 in indoor educational environments, highlighting their respective advantages.

Findings

LoRa is more robust in indoor deployments.

Both technologies are adequate depending on use case.

LoRa is ideal for low-bandwidth, indoor IoT applications.

Abstract

Several networking technologies targeting the IoT application space currently compete within the smart city domain, both in outdoor and indoor deployments. However, up till now, there is no clear winner, and results from real-world deployments have only recently started to surface. In this paper, we present a comparative study of 2 popular IoT networking technologies, LoRa and IEEE 802.15.4, within the context of a research-oriented IoT deployment inside school buildings in Europe, targeting energy efficiency in education. We evaluate the actual performance of these two technologies in real-world settings, presenting a comparative study on the effect of parameters like the built environment, network quality, or data rate. Our results indicate that both technologies have their advantages, and while in certain cases both are perfectly adequate, in our use case LoRa exhibits a more robust behavior. Moreover, LoRa's characteristics make it a very good choice for indoor IoT deployments such as in educational buildings, and especially in cases where there are low bandwidth requirements.