LoRaWAN Network Coverage Analysis in the Transportation Sector: A Real-World Approach

The Internet of Things (IoT) offers many possibilities for digitalization in companies, among other things through sensors or wireless networks. For example, GPS data, acceleration, or speed can be recorded and evaluated. There are various ways to transmit this data. For example, they can be sent to the Internet using an Internet-capable microcontroller, in which case the information is transferred via the HTTP protocol. Another option here is the Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN).

In this paper, the LoRaWAN network coverage provided by many gateways across Germany is evaluated mainly concerning the transportation sector. For these measurements, a focus is placed on the network coverage along the German rail routes. For this purpose, related works are first analyzed. Based on this, the objective of the measurement is concretized, and a microcontroller measurement module is prototypically developed and built. It is equipped with a suitable firmware based on the Arduino framework. Along a previously defined route, the measurement module continuously attempts to send GPS data via LoRaWAN. The received data will be stored and evaluated, including metadata like RSSI. The evaluation is not only concerned with network coverage, but also with some considerations of possible use cases in the transportation sector. Problems and Limitations will also be discussed.