Trilateration-based Multi-hop for the Long Range Wide Area Network

Abstract: Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) has an open specification that defines the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for LoRa networks, mainly based on pure-Aloha with beacon option. The LoRaWAN has a star of star topology where end-devices are directly linked to the gateway and up-link packets are primary traffic. This paper~contributes an approach of multi-hop in LoRaWAN. The potential benefits of multi-hop in LoRaWAN are investigated. A RSSI-based trilateration algorithm for graph construction is proposed. The shortest path for multi-hop and forwarding mechanism without local beacon is designed and implemented in simulation. This novel approach is tested in ns-3 simulator and different scenarios are run. Results indicate that multi-hop can decrease the energy consumption of LoRaWAN, by reducing Time on Air and TX power.