Review Paper on LoRa based technologies for Vehicular and Tracking applications

Abstract

LoRa stands For Long Range. It is a low powered wide area network derived from chirp spread spectrum technology and encodes information through chirp pulses on to the radio waves. The range of LoRa greatly varies from few meters to approximately 100 Kilometers depending on the mode of operation. The main advantage of LoRa against Bluetooth, WiFi and ZigBee is its long range and it is well suited for transmission of small chunks of data with low bit rates. LoRa is generally operated at 915MHz, 868MHz and 433MHz which are Sub-Giga Heartz bands. These are a part of the ISM bands which are reserved for Industrial and Medical Purposes Internationally which are free of cost and do not require any kind of licensing. Vehicular communication is a form of exchanging messages between various vehicular and roadside units regarding their location, speed and much more. The LoRa technology when integrated with Vehicular Communication establishment of green corridors for Emergency vehicles by clearing the traffic and help in reaching the destination with minimal time delay.

Introduction

I. INTRODUCTION

LoRa is a technology developed and patented by the company SemTech. LoRa is characterized by large cells and multiple application domains, which can cause extremely high numbers of devices coexisting in the same cell. It provides adaptive data rate and wide communication coverage and it is good at resisting the multipath fade. Its application varies from medicine to agriculture.

LoRaWAN is a MAC layer protocol built using LoRa modulation, this is a software that controls LoRa hardware deciding when it transmits and receives messages. This is more suitable for sending small bits of sensor data over a long range. Hence making it more cost effective and most range covered then its competing wireless communications systems (WIFI, Bluetooth, Zigbee) LoRaWAN uses ultra-low power by being in sleep mode and transmitting only when required, this uses licence Free spectrum and has deep indoor penetration making it accessible indoors and it also

provides end-to-end security for each node in the network and makes roaming easier with seamless handover from one network to the other.

In any mode of communication there are a certain number of factors which need to be taken into consideration based on the end devices communicating and the mode of communication taking place. Similarly based on the end nodes vehicular communication can also be of various types like it can be Vehicle to Vehicle or Vehicle to Cloud or Vehicle to Infrastructure or Vehicle to Network or Vehicle to Grid. DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communications) is the protocol which is currently used in Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication which operates at the 5.9 GHz alerting drivers to potential collisions and exchanging the data. When this kind of communication is established using the LoRa technology there are multiple factors which effect the transmissions like: Spreading factor, Signal Bandwidth, Carrier frequency, Code rate, Transmission Speed, reception Sensitivity and many more.

II. LITERATURE SURVEY

A. Alokkumar Rao,Bharat S. Chaudhari, Dr. Vishwanath Karad Development of LoRaWAN based Traffic Clearance System for Emergency Vehicles"(2020)

This paper proposes LoRa based emergency vehicle traffic signal clearance system, it combines both GPS module and LoRaWAN (gateway) technology to update website about the location of the Emergency Vehicle. LoPy nodes developed by pyCom  are mounted on the emergency vehicles and these LoPy nodes can work with LoRa, wifi Bluetooth etc. These vehicles will have a unique ID and start sending their GPS coordinates to the nearest LoRa gateway and the LoRa devices mounted on traffic signal in the vicinity. And the LoRa that manages the signal and the the things network (TTN) receives identity, GPS coordinates and Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), Through LoRa gateway, all this information is can be monitored in real time using TTN. This monitored value to can calculate the distance between the traffic signal and the vehicle, This value is compared with distance calculated by the LoRa module mounted on the signal making it more reliable. Through which a green corridor is established for the Vehicle to move with encountering  minimum traffic.

???????B. Krasen Kirov Angelov " Development and Implementation of a Demonstration Model of Smart Parking with LoRaBased Communication Module "(2020)

This paper published in 2020. It proposes a smart parking model with the use of geo magnetic sensors, Adafruit, Solar panels. The Solar panel is connected to a battery for the constant autonomous power supply, which is in turn connected to the Adafruit feather 32u4 LoRa Board. The geo magnetic sensor is embedded into the ground and is used to detect if there is presence of any vehicle in the parking lot. If it detects any vehicle in the parking lot it shows it through the graphical interface which is a smart scalable platform for intelligent provisioning and monitoring the information of the empty and full parking spaces along with the temperature and humidity of the surroundings in large cities with complex urban environment.

???????C. Li-Hsiang Shen, Chien-Hung Wu, Wun-Ci Su, Kai-Ten Feng" Analysis and Implementation for Traffic-Aware Channel Assignment and Contention Scheme in LoRa-Based IoT Networks" (2021)

This paper published in 2021 is a very detailed paper discussing and proposing a scheme to solve a major drawback of LoRa, the Network Capacity and Latency in massive LoRa network. Network Capacity and Latency can affect the communication between nodes and the server in a sever manner, especially if many nodes are actively connected and trying to communicate with the gateway. To solve this problem a new scheme – TCBA which can be abbreviated as Traffic-Aware channel and Backoff window allocation is proposed. This scheme is evaluated by analytically deriving throughput maximization, which provides a sub-optimal solution for both homogenous and heterogeneous LoRa networks and comparing with the simulated values using MATLAB. Because of the low end-to-end latency and high throughput offered by the TCBA scheme, the number of nodes that can be connected to LoRa is increased, making this scheme suitable for a large LoRa network. An indoor outdoor experiment using a LoRa device with a temperature sensor is also presented in this paper, demonstrating that the TCBA scheme can flexibly adjust both channel and backoff settings to achieve the lowest packet drop-off rate and highest throughput in both normal and high traffic conditions.

???????D. Daniele Croce, Domenico Garlisi, Fabrizio Giuliano, Alice Lo Valvo, Stefano Mangione, Ilenia Tinnirell  “Performance of LoRa for Bike-Sharing Systems" (2019)

This research paper provides the information about the LoRa technology as a tracking device in bike sharing system. In this LoRaWAN technology, MAC/PHY protocols and LoRa tracker module [Arduino Yun Board, SemTech sx1272 based LoRa transmission chip, USB based Global Positioning System module] is used to communicate between the bike and the base.

To adapt transmission characteristics to propagation conditions, the LoRaWAN network proposes an ADR (Adaptive Data Rate) mechanism. The Data Extraction Rate (DER) is used in this paper to ensure that packets are correctly received by the gateway, which is dependent on the number, location, and rate of LoRa end devices, as well as the distribution of SFs among them.

???????E. Flammini, F., Gaglione, A., Tokody, D., & Dohrilovic, D. " LoRa WAN Roaming for Intelligent Shipment Tracking"(2020)

With the help of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, this paper proposes an extension of the LoRaWAN roaming protocol. "Agreement-less roaming" is the mechanism proposed in this project. When a vehicle from one shipment company in one country connects to a LoRaWAN network from another shipment company in another country, this mechanism manages roaming. The expanded network also introduces Distributed Servers which include Network servers Join Servers and Application Servers.

The future work in this domain would include establishing protocols between networks and BUS. And improving the security and tracking with the help of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. The proposed model is expected to improve the shipping service's level of safety, comfort, and overall quality.

III. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Conclusion

After the research of existing methodologies and techniques used for tracking and vehicular communications different papers have described various technologies and most of the results obtained have definitely been better than the previous researches in the field and offer a new perspective of concepts. But, there is still a paved way for the development of the existing researches which can lead to multi-dimensional growth in the field of LoRa.

References

[1] Krasen Kirov Angelov Department of Communications Equipment and Technologies, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Electronics Technical University of Gabrovo , Bulgaria.\" Development and Implementation of a Demonstration Model of Smart Parking with LoRaBased Communication Module \"(2020).2020 XI National Conference with International Participation (ELECTRONICA). doi:10.1109/electronica50406.2020 [2] Daniele Croce, Domenico Garlisi, Fabrizio Giuliano, Alice Lo Valvo, Stefano Mangione, Ilenia Tinnirello Department of Engineering, Universita di Palermo, Italy.\" Performance of LoRa for Bike-Sharing Systems\" (2019). [IEEE 2019 AEIT International Conference of Electrical and Electronic Technologies for Automotive (AEIT AUTOMOTIVE) - Torino, Italy (2019.7.2-2019.7.4)] [3] Flammini, F., Gaglione, A., Tokody, D., & Dohrilovic, D. \" LoRa WAN Roaming for Intelligent Shipment Tracking\"(2020). 2020 IEEE Global Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things (GCAIoT). doi:10.1109/gcaiot51063.2020.9345843. [4] Alokkumar Rao,Bharat S. Chaudhari,School of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Dr. Vishwanath Karad MIT World Peace University, Pune, India. \"Development of LoRaWAN based Traffic Clearance System for Emergency Vehicles\"(2020). Published in: 2020 Fourth International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC) DOI: 10.1109/I-SMAC49090.2020.9243341 [5] Yujun Hou, Zujun Liu, Dechun Sun, Xidian University, Xi\'an, China. \"A novel MAC protocol exploiting concurrent transmissions for massive LoRa connectivity\"(2020). Published in: Journal of Communications and Networks (Volume: 22, Issue: 2, April 2020) DOI: 10.1109/JCN.2020.000005. [6] Li-Hsiang Shen, Chien-Hung Wu, Wun-Ci Su, Kai-Ten Feng,National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University/National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.\"Analysis and Implementation for Traffic-Aware Channel Assignment and Contention Scheme in LoRa-Based IoT Networks\" (2021). IEEE Internet of Things Journal (Volume: 8, Issue: 14, July15, 15 2021) DOI: 10.1109/JIOT.2021.3051347. [7] J. Wang, Y. Shao, Y. Ge, and R. Yu, “A survey of vehicle to everything (v2x) testing,” Sensors, vol. 19, no. 2, p. 334, 2019 [8] M. Centenaro, L. Vangelista, A. Zanella and M. Zorzi, “Long-range communications in unlicensed bands: the rising stars in the IoT and smart city scenarios,” IEEE Wireless Commun., vol. 23, no. 5, pp. 60-67, October 2016. [9] N. Manchev, K. Angelov, P. Kogias and S. Sadinov, “Development of Multichannel LoRaWAN Gateway for Educational Applications in Low-Power Wireless Communications”, IEEE XXVIII International Scientific Conference Electronics (ET 2019), Sozopol, Bulgaria, 2019, Electronic ISBN: 978-1-7281-2574-9 (DOI: 10.1109/ET.2019.8878492). [10] K. Angelov K., N. Manchev, P. Kogias, S. Sadinov, “Design and Development of a Platform for Test Applications in LoRa/LoRaWAN”, Proc. of papers, International Conference in Telecommunications, Informatics, Energy and Management (TIEM 2019), 12 – 14 September, Kavala, Greece, 2019, ISSN 2367-8437, pp.27-31.

Copyright

Copyright © 2022 C Y Prajwal, Chandan K S, M S Poorna Prajwal, Likith S, Santhosh B. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.