Performance Evaluation of Low-Power Wide Area based on LoRa Technology for Smart Metering

The concept of smart cities is one of innovative concept in our societies today. The paradigm of Internet-of-Thing consists the basis of the realization of the ICT platform(s) for the future cities. Two major challenges are faced by such realization. On one hand, smart cities cover several domains, such smart gird, smart transportation, smart building/homes, etc. On the other hand, the communications layer to support all the traffic generated by smart applications must have a large coverage, guarantee a given quality of service, cope with strongly heterogeneous traffic, low-cost, low power consumption, etc. Recently, different wireless/mobile technologies are proposed for the connectivity of IoT sensors/actuators in the smart city and to fulfil the cited requirements. This new wave of technologies is referred as “Low-Power Wide Area” (LPWA) wireless networks, which is represented by solutions like LoRa, SigFox, Narrowband IoT Long Term Evolution (NB-IoT LTE), etc. In this work, we make a performance evaluation of the LoRa system in connecting applications of smart distribution grid, as a part of smart cities; with main focus on smart metering.