LoRa-RL: Deep Reinforcement Learning for Resource Management in Hybrid Energy LoRa Wireless Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces reinforcement learning-based resource management strategies for hybrid energy-powered LoRa networks, aiming to optimize energy efficiency and reduce grid power consumption in IoT deployments.

Contribution

It proposes novel RL-based resource management schemes that adapt to channel and energy correlations, improving energy efficiency in hybrid LoRa networks.

Findings

RL schemes significantly reduce grid energy consumption.

Proposed algorithms outperform heuristic methods.

Efficient use of renewable energy is demonstrated.

Abstract

LoRa wireless networks are considered as a key enabling technology for next generation internet of things (IoT) systems. New IoT deployments (e.g., smart city scenarios) can have thousands of devices per square kilometer leading to huge amount of power consumption to provide connectivity. In this paper, we investigate green LoRa wireless networks powered by a hybrid of the grid and renewable energy sources, which can benefit from harvested energy while dealing with the intermittent supply. This paper proposes resource management schemes of the limited number of channels and spreading factors (SFs) with the objective of improving the LoRa gateway energy efficiency. First, the problem of grid power consumption minimization while satisfying the system's quality of service demands is formulated. Specifically, both scenarios the uncorrelated and time-correlated channels are investigated. The optimal resource management problem is solved by decoupling the formulated problem into two sub-problems: channel and SF assignment problem and energy management problem. Since the optimal solution is obtained with high complexity, online resource management heuristic algorithms that minimize the grid energy consumption are proposed. Finally, taking into account the channel and energy correlation, adaptable resource management schemes based on Reinforcement Learning (RL), are developed. Simulations results show that the proposed resource management schemes offer efficient use of renewable energy in LoRa wireless networks.