On the Use of LoRaWAN for Mobile Internet of Things: The Impact of Mobility

Abstract

A long-range wide-area network (LoRaWAN) targets both mobile and static Internet of Things (IoT) applications; it is suited to IoT applications, which require a large coverage area while consuming less power at a low data rate; it provides a solution for transferring data between IoT devices with a minimum cost in terms of power, at the expense of higher latency. LoRaWAN was designed for static low-power long-range networks. However, several IoT solution applications involve the use of mobility. Therefore, this study investigates the usage of LoRaWAN in the field of mobile Internet of Things applications such as bike rentals, fleet monitoring, and wildlife and animal tracking applications. Using the OMNeT++ simulator, two different well-known mobility models are used to investigate the influence of mobility on the performance of mobile LoRaWAN. The results show that intense LoRaWAN networks can operate under a high velocity and varying traffic load. It can be observed that the random waypoint model combination yields a better performance, but at the cost of higher collisions and energy consumption. As a consequence, the results suggest the reconsideration of mobile IoT solutions over LoRaWAN.