Experimental Study of LoRa Transmission over Seawater

Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) are gaining attention in both academia and industry by offering the possibility of connecting a large number of nodes over extended distances. LoRa is one of the technologies used as a physical layer in such networks. This paper investigates the LoRa links over seawater in two typical scenarios: clear Line-of-Sight (LOS) and obstructed path in two different Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) radio bands: 868MHz and 434MHz. We used three different LoRa devices in the experiments: the Own Developed LoRa Transceiver (ODT) and two commercial transceivers. Firstly we investigated transceivers’ Receive Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) and Signal-to-Noise (SNR) measurement chain linearity and provided correction factors for RSSI to correlate it with actual signal levels received at transceivers’ inputs. Next, we carried out field experiments for three different LoRa Spreading Factors, SF∈[7,10,12], within a bandwidth of BW=125kHz and Coding Rate CR=4/6. The experiments showed that LoRa links are fully feasible over seawater at distances at least 22km long, using only low-cost off-the-shelf rubber duck antennas in LOS path condition in both ISM bands. In addition, we showed that LoRa links can be established over 28km obstructed LOS oversea path in ISM 434MHz band, but using costly, higher gain antennas. Furthermore, the laboratory experiments revealed that RSSI is linear in a wide range, up to −50dBm, whereas the SNR measurement chain goes into saturation for Received Signal Strength (RSS) values higher than −100dBm. These findings enabled accurate interpretation of the results obtained in field experiments.