LoRaWAN and IoT

Perform network planning for the internet of things (IoT) in an urban scenario.

Sites and Antennas

A single monopole antenna is located on the roof of a building in an urban area. This antenna represents the transmitter antenna of a gateway in an IoT network. The goal is to determine whether the gateway can communicate with all the wireless sensors in the area and to determine the data rates that can be achieved.

Air Interface

The air interface is based on the LoRaWAN (long range wide-area network) standard for frequencies and bandwidths, as defined by the LoRa Alliance. Table 1 shows for each bandwidth, the spreading factor, and data rates for the minimum required power.
Table 1. The minimum required received power for bandwidth, spreading factor, and data rate.
Bandwidth (kHz) Spreading Factor Data Rate (bps) Receive Sensitivity (dBm)
125 12 300 -136
125 11 500 -133
125 10 1000 -132
125 9 1750 -129
125 8 3125 -126
125 7 5500 -123
125 6 9375 -118
Tip: Click Project > Edit Project Parameter and click the Air Interface tab.

Computational Method

The computational method is the dominant path model (DPM). This method focuses on the most relevant path, which leads to shorter computation times compared to ray tracing.

Tip: Click Project > Edit Project Parameter and click the Computation tab to change the model.

Results

The propagation analysis determines the power received by a hypothetical isotropic antenna at every location. The network planning compares those results with the minimum required received power for any transmission mode, taking into account the receiver settings for antenna gain and general device losses. For every transmission mode, the minimum SNIR is also considered, taking into account the thermal noise and the receiver’s noise figure.

Figure 1. The achievable data rates, based on receiver sensitivity.