{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,2]],"date-time":"2026-04-02T14:49:21Z","timestamp":1775141361619,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":21,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2018,3,3]],"date-time":"2018-03-03T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1520035200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness","award":["TIN2014-52099-R"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["TIN2014-52099-R"]}]},{"name":"Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness","award":["TIN2017-86885-R"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["TIN2017-86885-R"]}]},{"name":"Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness","award":["PCIN-2016-010"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["PCIN-2016-010"]}]},{"name":"AEI\/FEDER","award":["TEC2016-76465-C2-1-R"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["TEC2016-76465-C2-1-R"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>New verticals within the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm such as smart cities, smart farming, or goods monitoring, among many others, are demanding strong requirements to the Radio Access Network (RAN) in terms of coverage, end-node\u2019s power consumption, and scalability. The technologies employed so far to provide IoT scenarios with connectivity, e.g., wireless sensor network and cellular technologies, are not able to simultaneously cope with these three requirements. Thus, a novel solution known as Low Power - Wide Area Network (LP-WAN) has emerged as a promising alternative to provide with low-cost and low-power-consumption connectivity to end-nodes spread in a wide area. Concretely, the Long-Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) technology is one of the LP-WAN platforms that is receiving greater attention from both the industry and the academia. For that reason, in this work, a comprehensive performance evaluation of LoRaWAN under different environmental conditions is presented. The results are obtained from three real scenarios, namely, urban, suburban, and rural, considering both dynamic and static conditions, hence a discussion about the most proper LoRaWAN physical-layer configuration for each scenario is provided. Besides, a theoretical coverage study is also conducted by the use of a radio planning tool considering topographic maps and a precise propagation model. From the attained results, it can be concluded that it is necessary to evaluate the propagation conditions of the deployment scenario prior to the system implantation in order to reach a compromise between the robustness of the network and the transmission data-rate.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s18030772","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2018,3,6]],"date-time":"2018-03-06T07:37:25Z","timestamp":1520321845000},"page":"772","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":232,"title":["Performance Evaluation of LoRa Considering Scenario Conditions"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"18","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0069-3017","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ramon","family":"Sanchez-Iborra","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2673-3790","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jesus","family":"Sanchez-Gomez","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5525-1259","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Juan","family":"Ballesta-Vi\u00f1as","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Universidad Politecnica de Cartagena, 30202 Cartagena, Spain"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4952-0325","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Maria-Dolores","family":"Cano","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Universidad Politecnica de Cartagena, 30202 Cartagena, Spain"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5525-1259","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Antonio F.","family":"Skarmeta","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2018,3,3]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sanchez-Iborra, R., and Cano, M.-D. (2016). State of the art in LP-WAN solutions for industrial IoT services. Sensors, 16.","DOI":"10.3390\/s16050708"},{"key":"ref_2","unstructured":"Sanchez-Gomez, J., Sanchez-Iborra, R., and Skarmeta, A. (2017, January 4\u20138). Experimental comparison of LoRa and FSK as IoT-communication-enabling modulations. Proceedings of the IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom\u201917), Singapore."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"855","DOI":"10.1109\/COMST.2017.2652320","article-title":"Low Power Wide Area Networks: An Overview","volume":"19","author":"Raza","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor."},{"key":"ref_4","unstructured":"LoRa-Alliance (2015). A Technical Overview of LoRa and LoRaWAN, The LoRa Alliance. White Paper."},{"key":"ref_5","unstructured":"Sigfox (2014). M2M and IoT Redefined through Cost Effective and Energy Optimized Connectivity, Sigfox. White Paper."},{"key":"ref_6","first-page":"45","article-title":"Integrating LP-WAN communications within the vehicular ecosystem","volume":"7","author":"Santa","year":"2017","journal-title":"J. Internet Serv. Inf. Secur."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Herrera-Tapia, J., Hernandez-Orallo, E., Tomas, A., Calafate, C., Cano, J.-C., Zennaro, M., and Manzoni, P. (2017, January 16\u201318). Evaluating the use of sub-gigahertz wireless technologies to improve message delivery in opportunistic networks. Proceedings of the 14th IEEE International Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control, (ICNSC 2017), Calabria, Italy.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICNSC.2017.8000109"},{"key":"ref_8","unstructured":"(2017, December 20). CloudRF\u2014Online Radio Planning. Available online: https:\/\/cloudrf.com\/."},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Parada, R., C\u00e1rdenes-Tacoronte, D., Monzo, C., and Meli\u00e0-Segu\u00ed, J. (2017). Internet of THings Area Coverage Analyzer (ITHACA) for complex topographical scenarios. Symmetry, 9.","DOI":"10.3390\/sym9100237"},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"162","DOI":"10.1109\/LWC.2016.2647247","article-title":"Low Power Wide Area Network Analysis: Can LoRa Scale?","volume":"6","author":"Georgiou","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Wirel. Commun. Lett."},{"key":"ref_11","unstructured":"Mikhaylov, K., Pet\u00e4j\u00e4j\u00e4rv, J., and H\u00e4nninen, T. (2016, January 18\u201320). Analysis of the capacity and scalability of the LoRa wide area network technology. Proceedings of the 22th European Wireless Conference, Oulu, Finland."},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bankov, D., Khorov, E., and Lyakhov, A. (2016, January 29\u201330). On the limits of LoRaWAN channel access. Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering and Telecommunication (EnT), Moscow, Russia.","DOI":"10.1109\/EnT.2016.011"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Naoui, S., Elhdhili, M.E., and Saidane, L.A. (2016, January 22\u201325). Enhancing the security of the IoT LoraWAN architecture. Proceedings of the International Conference on Performance Evaluation and Modeling in Wired and Wireless Networks (PEMWN), Paris, France.","DOI":"10.1109\/PEMWN.2016.7842904"},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Weber, P., Jackle, D., Rahusen, D., and Sikora, A. (2016, January 26\u201327). IPv6 over LoRaWAN. Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Wireless Systems within the Conferences on Intelligent Data Acquisition and Advanced Computing Systems (IDAACS-SWS), Offenburg, Germany.","DOI":"10.1109\/IDAACS-SWS.2016.7805790"},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Petric, T., Goessens, M., Nuaymi, L., Toutain, L., and Pelov, A. (2016, January 4\u20138). Measurements, performance and analysis of LoRa FABIAN, a real-world implementation of LPWAN. Proceedings of the IEEE 27th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), Valencia, Spain.","DOI":"10.1109\/PIMRC.2016.7794569"},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1466","DOI":"10.3390\/s16091466","article-title":"A study of LoRa: Long Range & low power networks for the Internet of Things","volume":"16","author":"Augustin","year":"2016","journal-title":"Sensors"},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Haxhibeqiri, J., Karaagac, A., Van den Abeele, F., Joseph, W., Moerman, I., and Hoebeke, J. (2017, January 12\u201315). LoRa indoor coverage and performance in an industrial environment: Case study. Proceedings of the 22nd IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA), Limassol, Cyprus.","DOI":"10.1109\/ETFA.2017.8247601"},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Petajajarvi, J., Mikhaylov, K., Roivainen, A., Hanninen, T., and Pettissalo, M. (2015, January 2\u20134). On the coverage of LPWANs: Range evaluation and channel attenuation model for LoRa technology. Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on ITS Telecommunications (ITST), Copenhagen, Denmark.","DOI":"10.1109\/ITST.2015.7377400"},{"key":"ref_19","first-page":"1","article-title":"Performance of a low-power wide-area network based on LoRa technology: Doppler robustness, scalability, and coverage","volume":"13","author":"Mikhaylov","year":"2017","journal-title":"Int. J. Distrib. Sens. Netw."},{"key":"ref_20","unstructured":"Wixted, A.J., Kinnaird, P., Larijani, H., Tait, A., Ahmadinia, A., and Strachan, N. (November, January 30). Evaluation of LoRa and LoRaWAN for wireless sensor networks. Proceedings of the IEEE Sensors, Orlando, FL, USA."},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"34","DOI":"10.1109\/MCOM.2017.1600613","article-title":"Understanding the limits of LoRaWAN","volume":"55","author":"Adelantado","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Mag."}],"container-title":["Sensors"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/18\/3\/772\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T14:57:28Z","timestamp":1760194648000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/18\/3\/772"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2018,3,3]]},"references-count":21,"journal-issue":{"issue":"3","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2018,3]]}},"alternative-id":["s18030772"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/s18030772","relation":{},"ISSN":["1424-8220"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1424-8220","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2018,3,3]]}}}