Spreading Factor Allocation in LoRaWAN for Reliability and Delay-Constrained Smart Metering Applications
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5753/jisa.2025.5932Keywords:
Delay, LoRaWAN, Reliability, Smart Metering, Spreading Factor AllocationAbstract
Long Range Wide-Area Network (LoRaWAN) is a prominent IoT technology, and one of its operational parameters that significantly influences reliable transmission and packet delivery delay is Spreading Factor (SF). In this context, this paper develops a Spreading Factor Allocation scheme, named Delay and Reliability-aware Spreading Factor Allocation (DR-SFA), and evaluates it through simulations in comparison with four related solutions: Initial Spreading Factor Allocation (I-SFA), Adaptive Data Rate (ADR), I-SFA+ADR, and Collision-Aware Adaptive Data Rate (CA-ADR). The simulated scenarios model an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) executing Interval Meter Reading (IMR) and Power-Control Command (PCC) applications, with 200 to 1000 Smart Meters (SMs) distributed across an area of 56.25 km2. The results demonstrate that DR-SFA outperforms the alternative solutions by reducing the number of required Data Aggregation Points (DAPs) by up to 92.86%, while meeting the reliability and maximum delay requirements of the tested applications. Furthermore, DR-SFA successfully receives packets from meters located up to 2197.56 meters away in the scenario with 200 SMs, and achieves a Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) of 99.49%, while also decreasing packet loss due to interference by 83.84% compared to ADR, and packet loss due to under sensitivity by 53.96% compared to I-SFA+ADR, in the scenario with 1000 SMs.
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