Study of LoRaWAN wireless communication protocol and an IoT application

LoRa is a patented modulation scheme based on the CSS technique. This technique is implemented in the physical layer of LoRaWAN, which is one of today's prominent LPWA technologies. The most important feature of LoRa is that it can enable long-range communication as well as a low data rate and low energy consumption. This thesis focuses on the performance of LoRa in different environments. Two different applications were performed for these performance tests; the first is the physical application and the second is the simulation application. This study also observes the indoor performance of LoRa, although natural attention is paid more to outdoor performance for physical application. Outdoor test sites are urban areas, tree-lined recreation areas and high hills with a good Fresnel Field. Indoor measurements were in two environments. The first is a multi-storey building. The second is a narrow section tunnel environment. PDR, RSSI and SNR values were measured by selecting different spread factors and transmission power for each test environment and the results were discussed. According to the propagation model selected for simulation application, performance tests are performed by selecting different locations or distances of both outdoor and indoor environments. For performance tests, modeling of LoRaWAN end device, gateway, network, join and application servers, which is not yet in the library of Opnet Modeler simulation tool, was performed. PDR, RSSI and SNR performance criteria were evaluated and analyzed by selecting different spread factor, path loss exponent and transmission power for each different distance between the end device and the gateway.