{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,2]],"date-time":"2026-07-02T00:12:37Z","timestamp":1782951157386,"version":"3.54.5"},"reference-count":41,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"21","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,10,30]],"date-time":"2019-10-30T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1572393600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100002341","name":"Academy of Finland","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["6Genesis Flagship (Grant no 318927)"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["6Genesis Flagship (Grant no 318927)"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100002341","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100002341","name":"Academy of Finland","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["EE-IoT (Grant no 319008)"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["EE-IoT (Grant no 319008)"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100002341","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"BusinessFinland","award":["MOSSAF project"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["MOSSAF project"]}]},{"name":"CNPq, PrInt CAPES-UFSC","award":["Automation 4.0"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["Automation 4.0"]}]},{"name":"NESC P&amp;D Brasil","award":["roject F-LOCO, Energisa, ANEEL PD-00405-1804\/2018"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["roject F-LOCO, Energisa, ANEEL PD-00405-1804\/2018"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs) are emerging rapidly as a fundamental Internet of Things (IoT) technology because of their low-power consumption, long-range connectivity, and ability to support massive numbers of users. With its high growth rate, Long-Range (LoRa) is becoming the most adopted LPWAN technology. This research work contributes to the problem of LoRa spreading factor (SF) allocation by proposing an algorithm on the basis of K-means clustering. We assess the network performance considering the outage probabilities of a large-scale unconfirmed-mode class-A LoRa Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) model, without retransmissions. The proposed algorithm allows for different user distribution over SFs, thus rendering SF allocation flexible. Such distribution translates into network parameters that are application dependent. Simulation results consider different network scenarios and realistic parameters to illustrate how the distance from the gateway and the number of nodes in each SF affects transmission reliability. Theoretical and simulation results show that our SF allocation approach improves the network\u2019s average coverage probability up to 5 percentage points when compared to the baseline model. Moreover, our results show a fairer network operation where the performance difference between the best- and worst-case nodes is significantly reduced. This happens because our method seeks to equalize the usage of each SF. We show that the worst-case performance in one deployment scenario can be enhanced by     1.53     times.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s19214723","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,10,31]],"date-time":"2019-10-31T05:18:26Z","timestamp":1572499106000},"page":"4723","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":40,"title":["K-Means Spreading Factor Allocation for Large-Scale LoRa Networks"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"19","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3594-8910","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Muhammad","family":"Asad Ullah","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, 90014 Oulu, Finland"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9252-3658","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Junnaid","family":"Iqbal","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, 90014 Oulu, Finland"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8883-8523","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Arliones","family":"Hoeller","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, 90014 Oulu, Finland"},{"name":"Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florian\u00f3polis 88040-900, Brazil"},{"name":"Department of Telecommunications Engineering, Federal Institute for Education, Science, and Technology of Santa Catarina, S\u00e3o Jos\u00e9 88103-310, Brazil"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7389-6245","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Richard Demo","family":"Souza","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florian\u00f3polis 88040-900, Brazil"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8689-5313","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Hirley","family":"Alves","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, 90014 Oulu, Finland"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,10,30]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"349","DOI":"10.1109\/JIOT.2014.2337336","article-title":"A Vision of IoT: Applications, Challenges, and Opportunities With China Perspective","volume":"1","author":"Chen","year":"2014","journal-title":"IEEE Internet Things J."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"4724","DOI":"10.1109\/TII.2018.2852491","article-title":"Industrial Internet of Things: Challenges, Opportunities, and Directions","volume":"14","author":"Sisinni","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. 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