Interference Modelling in a Multi-Cell LoRa System

As the market for low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) technologies expands and the number of connected devices increases, it is becoming important to investigate the performance of LPWAN candidate technologies in dense deployment scenarios. In dense deployments, where the networks usually exhibit the traits of an interference-limited system, a detailed intra- and inter-cell interference analysis of LPWANs is required. In this paper, we model and analyze the performance of uplink communication of a LoRa link in a multi-cell LoRa system. To such end, we use mathematical tools from stochastic geometry and geometric probability to model the spatial distribution of LoRa devices. The model captures the effects of the density of LoRa cells and the allocation of quasi-orthogonal spreading factors (SF) on the success probability of the LoRa transmissions. To account for practical deployment of LoRa gateways, we model the spatial distribution of the gateways with a Poisson point process (PPP) and Matèrn hard-core point process (MHC). Using our analytical formulation, we find the uplink performance in terms of success probability and potential throughput for each of the available SF in LoRa’s physical layer. Our results show that in dense multi-cell LoRa deployment with uplink traffic, the inter-cell interference noticeably degrades the system performance.