Slotted ALOHA Overlay on LoRaWAN - A Distributed Synchronization Approach

• Published in: 2018 IEEE 16th International Conference on Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing (EUC) pp. 129 - 132
• Main Authors: Polonelli, Tommaso, Brunelli, Davide, Benini, Luca
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.10.2018
• Subjects: Bandwidth; Clocks; Internet of Things; Logic gates; Long Range Radio; LoRaWAN; Protocols; Scalability; Synchronization; Uncertainty; Wireless networks
• DOI: 10.1109/EUC.2018.00026

LoRaWAN is one of the most promising standards for IoT applications. Nevertheless, the high density of end-devices expected for each gateway, the absence of an effective synchronization scheme between gateway and end-devices, challenge the scalability of these networks. In this article, we propose to regulate the communication of LoRaWAN networks using a Slotted-ALOHA instead of the classic ALOHA approach used by LoRa. The implementation is an overlay on top of the standard LoRaWAN; thus no modification in pre-existing LoRaWAN firmware and libraries is necessary. Our method is based on a novel distributed synchronization service that is suitable for low-cost IoT end-nodes. S-ALOHA supported by our synchronization service significantly improves the performance of traditional LoRaWAN networks regarding packet loss rate and network throughput.