This full text paper was peer-reviewed at the direction of IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society prior to the

acceptance and publication.

Research on LoRa Communication Performance in

Manhole Cover Monitoring
1st Liu Xuan 2nd Zhang Hesheng 3rd Li Lei
School of Electrical Engineering School of Electrical Engineering School of Electrical Engineering
Beijing Jiaotong University Beijing Jiaotong University Beijing Jiaotong University
Beijing, China Beijing, China Beijing, China
16121485@bjtu.edu.cn Hszhang@bjtu.edu.cn 16121475@bjtu.edu.cn

Abstract—In order to solve the problem of short wireless
communication distance and high power consumption in
manhole cover monitoring, LoRa communication technology
with long distance and low power consumption is introduced to
transmit monitoring data in manhole cover monitoring. The
application architecture of LoRa in intelligent manhole cover
monitoring system is studied. On the basis of theoretical analysis,
the wireless communication performance of LoRa technology is
tested and verified. The actual test shows that the communication
distance of LoRa can reach 700 meters, and the battery life by
using LoRa can reach more than 3 years. LoRa achieves the goal
of low power consumption and long distance in manhole cover
monitoring, provides an effective solution for safety management
of urban road manhole cover, and also provides new ideas and
development direction for interconnection of more Internet of
Things terminals with similar conditions.
Keywords—intelligent manhole cover monitoring; LoRa; low
power and long distance communication; performance test
evaluation
I. INTRODUCTION
With the rapid development of urban infrastructure
construction, the manhole cover of various underground pipe
networks of urban roads are increasing. In recent years, due to
the lack of effective management method for manhole cover,
accidents have occurred frequently, seriously affecting the
safety of citizens travel and causing bad social impact. The
effective and safety management of urban road manhole covers
has become a major problem in urban management.
In view of the situation, we propose a kind of intelligent
manhole cover monitoring system, which is based on electronic
sensor technology, wireless communication technology, and
computer processing technology. In the application of wireless
communication technology, there are two kinds of wireless
communication technologies used for manhole cover
monitoring: short-range wireless technology and long-range
wireless technology[1,2]. In the short-range wireless scheme,
for example, ZigBee is a wireless technology with low
complexity, low power consumption, and low data rate. But the
communication distance is insufficient. When deployed in a
large area, a large number of repeaters and routing equipment
are needed, the cost increases and the reliability decreases. In
the long-distance wireless scheme, for example, the
communication distance of GPRS is long and reliability is
relatively high. However, it relies on the public network,
consumes a lot of power and requires the cost of data
communication. It is not suitable for the manhole cover
monitoring system with large number of terminals and battery-
powered monitoring devices.
In the manhole cover monitoring, the manhole cover
monitoring node has obvious characteristics: large number,
wide distribution, battery-powered monitoring devices, small
amount of single transmission data, low data rate, and low-cost
construction. For such requirements, LoRa will improve the
performance of the monitoring system. From the technical
point of view, Lora has more advantages than other
technologies such as the free frequency band, low power
consumption, long distance, low speed, strong anti-jamming
ability, low cost, reliable transmission, etc. [3], especially the
low power and long distance. LoRa is suitable for information
transmission from the monitoring terminal to sink node in the
manhole cover monitoring system.
Therefore, we put forward the application of LoRa in
manhole cover monitoring to achieve low power consumption
and long distance communication between monitoring terminal
and sink node. It can reduce the use of repeater and
concentrator in large-scale coverage construction, reduce
power consumption, save cost and provide an effective solution
for the safety management of urban road covers.
II. LORA TECHNOLOGY
A. The Application Status
LoRa is a typical technology of LPWAN㸦 Low Power
Wide Area Network㸧㸪which is designed for low-speed, low-
power, long-distance, multi-connection applications in the
Internet of Things. Since the LoRa special chip was developed
by Semtech company in 2013, LoRa has been quickly
promoted in Europe and America. At present, LoRa has carried
out large-scale testing and demonstration deployment at home
and abroad, deploying a metropolitan area network in more
than a dozen countries and more than 300 cities. In South
Korea and Holland, both network deployment and commercial
application have been completed [4]. LoRa has been applied to
remote meter reading, transportation, buildings, environmental
monitoring and other fields [5,6,7,8]. However, there is not
much literature available for the manhole cover management of
urban road.
B. Technical Characteristics
1) Important Parameter: LoRa wireless communication
has four key parameters including carrier frequency, spread
spectrum factor, signal bandwidth and coding rate. They
jointly determine the power consumption, transmission

978-1-5386-3460-8/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE

distance, speed and anti-jamming capability. In subsequent
chapters, the SX1278 chip of Semtech company is used as a
reference.
a) Carrier Frequency: LoRa operates in Sub-GHz band,
mainly including 433 MHz, 868 MHz, 915 MHz and so on.
Among them, 433 MHz and 868 MHz are commonly used in
Europe, and 915 MHz is mainly used in in the US[9]. In China,
433 MHz and 470 MHz are frequently used.
b) Spread Spectrum Factor (SF): the LoRa spread
spectrum modulation is to communicate by extending each
bit of the effective information. LoRa uses an
unconventional definition of SF as the logarithm, in base 2,
of the number of chirps per symbol. The transmission rate
of the spread spectrum information is called the symbol
rate, and the code rate to the symbol rate is the spread
spectrum factor, representing the number of chirps which is
transformed by each symbol.
c) Channel Bandwidth (BW): bandwidth is an
important parameter for LoRa modulation. It represents the
upper and lower frequency of the signal allowed to pass
through the channel. Increasing it can increase the data
transmission rate and reduce the signal transmission time,
but it will reduce the signal reception sensitivity. On the
contrary, reducing it can improve the sensitivity.
Compared with FCK 㸦 Frequency Shift Keying 㸧 [11],
LoRa modulation improves the sensitivity of 6 dBm to 10 dBm.
2) Spread Spectrum Modulation
LoRa modulation is based on Chirp Spread Spectrum,
using linear frequency modulation㸦LFM㸧 pulse modulation
signal to expand the spectrum bandwidth of communication
signal. It does not need pseudo-random code sequence
modulation. The frequency bandwidth of LFM pulse signal is
much larger than that of information bandwidth, and its anti-
jamming performance is better [12]. According to the Shannon
formula:
C = B × log 2 (1 + S N ) (3)
C is channel capacity, B is channel bandwidth, S / N is
the signal to noise ratio of channel output(SNR). In formula (3),
when the channel capacity is certain, the signal bandwidth and
SNR are inversely correlated. Increasing the signal bandwidth
can reduce the demand for SNR. When the bandwidth
increases to a certain extent, the SNR will be allowed lower, so
that when the signal power may be near the noise even below
the noise, the receiver can still correctly analyze the signal.
This is the theoretical basis for LoRa modulation.
In Chirp Spread Spectrum, the time domain expressions of
typical signals are:
  k 2  , T
x (t ) = A cos  2π  f 0 t +
T
d) Coding Rate (CR): Coding rate is the ratio of useful t  - ≤ t ≤ (4)
parts (non redundant) in data streams. In order to improve link 
2
 2 2
robustness, LoRa modulation uses cyclic error correction
coding for forward error detection and error correction. A is the amplitude of the transmitted signal, f 0 is the
Considering the condition of forward error correction code, carrier center frequency, k is the frequency slope, and T is the
the coding rate is recorded㸦n represents range of values㸧: signal cycle. When k 㸺0, up-frequency modulation, k 㸼0,
4 down-frequency modulation.
CR = , n ∈ {1, 2,3, 4} (1)
n+4

The effective data bit rate Rb [10] can be obtained:

BW
Rb = SF × × CR (2)
2 SF
Under the condition of typical value, BW=125 kHz and
CR=4/5, the relationship between SF and sensitivity is as Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of Chirp signal
follows㸦Table I㸧:
III. APPLICATION OF LORA IN INTELLIGENT MANHOLE
TABLE I. DIFFERENT SPREADING FACTORS COVER MONITORING SYSTEM
Equivalent bit Sensitivity Difference value A. System Structure
SF
rate˄bps˅ ˄dBm˅ ˄dBm˅
The intelligent manhole cover monitoring system is divided
FCK 1200 -122 -- into three layers: the shift trigger is responsible for the real time
12 293 -137 +15 monitoring of the manhole cover state, collecting information
11 537 -134.5 +12.5
and sending to the concentrator. The concentrator completes
information aggregation and storage, and sends the information
10 976 -132 +10 to the remote server so that the upper layer can process,
9 1757 -129 +7 analyze and store data. In the system, the concentrator acts as
8 3125 -1126 +4
an intermediate connection, the uplink is responsible for the
information gathering and data uploading of each trigger node,
7 5468 -123 +1 and the downlink is responsible for the receiving and sending
6 9375 -118 -4 of upper instructions. In this manuscript, we mainly use LoRa
to achieve the wireless communication between triggers and
concentrators.The basic structure is shown in Fig. 2.
Fig. 2. Basic structure
B. Application and Implementation of LoRa
The red box is the specific application part of LoRa in Fig.
2. The following is an introduction to the application of LoRa.
1) Terminal type
According to literature[13], LoRa transmission mode can
be divided into three modes: Class A, Class B, Class C.
Different models are applicable for different business models.
In the intelligent manhole cover monitoring system, low-power
and long distance communication is realized by using the Class
A mode in view of the low speed and small data quantity of the
terminal. The introduction of this model is that terminal device
will open two short duration reception windows to receive
downlink data after each data transmission, which can achieve
two-way communication, but not active downlink transmission.
The transmission time interval is equal to the base time interval
of the terminal device plus a random time (based on the
ALOHA protocol). For terminal devices, class A is the system
with the lowest power consumption, and receives data sent by
the processing server only a short period of time after sending
data. The downlink data of the server at any other time must
wait for the next time to send data. The communication process
is initiated by the terminal, while the Gateway sends downlink
information depending on the transmission of the terminal, as
shown in Fig. 3.
Fig. 3. The transmission model of Class A
2) Network structure
LoRa uses single hop and star topology to achieve wireless
communication between the terminal and the gateway (Fig. 2).
In this topology, each terminal node can directly connect with
the sink node, send data independently, and do not affect each
other. Even if the single node or link fails, it will not lead to the
interruption of whole network communication , but the sink
node is more demanding.
IV. PERFORMANCE TESTING AND EVALUATION
A. Test Preparation
We carries out tests for the LoRa performance (distance,
signal strength, and power consumption, etc.) in urban road
manhole cover monitoring. The test device uses self-designed
manhole cover monitoring trigger and concentrator based on
SX1278(Fig. 4). The trigger is battery-powered, and the
concentrator is powered by electricity or solar power.
Fig. 4. Test device
The testing environment includes urban roads (open terrain)
and the unit area ( many buildings blocked). The monitoring
object is the manhole cover, and the underground condition is
worse than the ground communication. In order to determine
LoRa communication performance under poor conditions, cast
iron manhole covers are selected, which absorb and shield
signals more effectively than cement, resin and concrete
manhole covers.
B. Test Result
In this section, the distance, signal strength, packet loss rate
and power consumption are tested and validated[14].
1) Urban Road Test 㸦 aboveground environment㸧
The starting point of the test is in Da Liu Shu Lu, Haidian
District, Beijing, and ends at Zhongguancun East Road. The
Lora module has the longest straight communication distance
of about 4.6 km and can meet the expectation.
Fig. 5. Test environment and test distance
According to the datasheet of SX1278[15], its maximum
transmitting power is 20 dBm(transmitting power refers to the
energy intensity emitted by devices), the maximum sensitivity
is -148 dBm , and the maximum link budget is 168 dBm. From
the test data (Table II), the sensitivity can reach -144.1 dBm
and the maximum link budget is 164.1 dBm, close to datasheet
(range from -111~-148 dBm). The performance is relatively 300 51 200 200 0.0%
good ( take SF as 12 and 6 ,which are divided into two groups).
400 48 200 200 0.0%
TABLE II. THE TEST DATA OF LORA 500 44 200 200 0.0%
Air Transmit Sensitivity Bandwith Max Link
600 39 200 200 0.0%
Rate (bps) (dBm) (kHz) Budget (dBm)
50.78 -144.1 31.2 164.1 700 32 200 190 5.0%

61.04 -143.1 41.7 163.1 800 21 200 6 ˚90%

81.45 -141.8 62.5 161.8 3) Long-term Test

In order to verify the communication performance of LoRa
122.07 -140 80 160 and the reliability of the device, the nodes are deployed in two
244.14 -137 125 157 different environments for long-term test(urban road and the
residential area in Yungang District). The trigger is same as Fig.
406.9 -135 150 135 6, the node deployment is shown in Fig. 7. Some nodes are
813.8 -132 250 132 distributed in the residential area and some nodes are
distributed in the urban road. Fig. 8 shows the upper computer
1464.84 -129.5 500 149.5 interface, from which we can know the nodes information.
1790.36 -128.5 31.2 148.5 According to the monitoring data, we analyze the results and
draw conclusions㸦under the condition of typical value, the
2604.17 -127 41.7 147
transmitting power is 20 dBm and SF=12㸧.
3255.21 -126 62.5 146

4557.29 -124.5 80 144.5

5859.38 -123.5 125 143.5

10416.67 -121 150 141

18229.17 -118.5 250 138.5

31250 -116 500 136

2) Field Test 㸦 underground environment㸧
In the test, the trigger is installed under the cast-iron
manhole cover (Fig. 6). The concentrator moves continuously
to maintain a height of 3 meters ( higher, and worse the signal
reception). Because the real-time requirement is not high, the
LoRa parameters are set according to the typical values of
previous section, SF=12, air transmission rate is 0.12 kbps, and
transmitting power is 20 dBm.

Fig. 7. The concentrator and node distribution

Fig. 6. Field test

The data can be known by the screen of the concentrator.

The test data is recorded by average value㸦Table III㸧. Signal Fig. 8. Monitoring interface of upper computer
intensity refers to the signal reception intensity by the receiver.
Here,it is expressed in absolute value. C. Performance Analysis
1) Link Budget
TABLE III. TEST RESULTS IN DIFFERENT DISTANCES In order to compare the transmission range of different
Signal wireless communication technologies, link budget is used as a
Distance Sending Receiving Packet quantitative reference index. In general, the factors affecting
intensity
(m) number number error rate
(dBm) link budget include all the variables that affect the signal
200 54 200 200 0.0% strength of the receiver (such as transmit power, penetration
loss). To facilitate the analysis, the main factors in the technologies, which is tens of times of Zigbee (tens of meters
simplified system are transmit power and receiver sensitivity. [18]), and its communication capability is stronger.
In Fig.9, the maximum power of the device is 17 dBm, the
sensitivity is -137 dBm, and the link budget is 154 dBm. In
contrast, GFSK㸦Gauss Frequency Shift Keying㸧has the
sensitivity of -110 dBm[16] and requires 40 dBm (10 W) to
achieve the same link budget. Most GFSK wireless technology
can not reach the maximum value in reality. If estimated by -
103 dBm, the transmit power must reach 50 dBm (100 W), so
that the link budget similar to LoRa can be achieved.
-110 170

-120 160

154 dBm
Fig. 10. Distance, Signal intensity and PER
-130 150

-137 dBm 3) Stability

-140 140
-150 130
101 102 103 104 105
Fig. 9. The speed and sensitivity
2) Communication Distance
Compared with the long-distance communication methods
(such as GPRS), LoRa belongs to the type of relatively short
communication distance. Communication distance can be used
as a key indicators to measure communication performance[17].
Because of the influence of different factors such as technology
carrier and environment, the actual performance of wireless
communication will deviate from the theoretical value.
Generally speaking, the communication strength is inversely
correlated with the communication distance, and the signal
strength will weaken with the distance increasing. In the
simplified system, the optimum distance and the limit distance
can be used as reference to evaluate the performance of
different technologies.
In the field test, if the packet error rate (PER) is defined as
the ratio of the number of packet loss to the number of the
received packets, the result is shown in Fig.10. When the signal
intensity is about 39 dBm or the distance is 600 m, the PER is
zero, so the optimal communication distance is 600 m.
Between 750 m and 800 m, the signal intensity is lower than 30
dBm, the PER is large, and the information can still be
received, so the farthest communication distance is about 750
m. Between 600 m and 700 m, the PER is within 5% (less than
10%), and the signal strength above 30 dBm can maintain good
communication effect. If the signal intensity is below 30 dBm,
the communication effect will be worse with the increase of
distance. In summary, when the distance is less than 700 m or
the signal intensity is above 30 dBm (including 30 dBm), The
communication performance is reliable.
In large-scale coverage and network construction, the
communication distance between terminal and sink node
directly affects the monitoring range and system cost. In the
application of wireless communication technology for Internet
of Things, LoRa is greater than other short-range wireless
In two different environments, we use the intelligent
manhole cover monitoring system designed by us to carry out
remote monitoring. During the 200 days, data collected from
each node are shown in Fig.11. The relationship between
distance and signal intensity is negatively correlated. Due to
the different environment, many obstacles (buildings, trees and
so on) in the residential area will weaken the signal so that the
signal intensity of 60m is lower than the 80m. In the urban road,
there is less shelter. With the increase of distance, the signal
intensity gradually decays. In combination with two results, the
monitoring device based on LoRa can achieve a long distance
and stable communication for the manhole cover. Even if there
are interference as obstructions, the LoRa can exert the
advantages of stronger penetration and long distance
communication(range from 250 m to 700 m).
Fig. 11. Test results in different environments
4) Low Power Consumption
LoRa use CSS mechanism to make the synchronization timing
of wireless signals between the receiver and transmitter can be
determined by frequency offset. Receiver does not need very
accurate signals, which reduces the complexity and cost of
receiver design. The forward error correction mechanism and
cyclic error correction coding are adopted to reduce the bit
error rate, the number of retransmission and the power
consumption of the transmitter. LoRa supports various low
power mode switching, with receiving current about 10mA and
sleep current about 2 A[19]. In normal operation, the signal
power can be very low because of low SNR and low power
spectral density. The transmission rate is low, the amount of
data is small, and the signal receiving and transmitting time is
short. When not working, nodes can enter the sleep mode,
which will reduce power consumption. In the manhole cover
monitoring system, the monitoring devices rely on battery
power for normal operation. The power consumption directly
affects the working life. The monitoring trigger (Fig. 4) has
three working states: sleep state, wake-up detection state and
transmission state (Table IV). For example, the trigger is in the
sleep state for most of the time, the measured current is about
75 A, the measured current of the wake-up state is about 1.92
mA, the measured current of the transmission state (transmitted
through LoRa) is about 71.9 mA.
TABLE IV. THE MEASURED CURRENT OF TRIGGER
Working Total
LoRa others Power loss
State current
Sleep State 2.5A 72.8A 75.3A 0.24849mw
Wake-Up 2.5A 1.9215mA 1.924mA 6.3492mw
Transmission 71.8272mA 72.8A 71.9mA 237.27mw
Suppose trigger is triggered 200 times per day with 5
seconds per time, one status message sending per day with 4
seconds. The energy consumed in 24 hours is calculated as:
5 × 200 4 192-192, 2017.
E = 1.92 × + 72 × + 0.076 × 24 ≈ 2.437mAh (5)
3600 3600
The nominal capacity of the single ER18505M cell is
3500mAh. Considering the battery self consumption, assuming
that the self loss coefficient is 0.8, the working life of the
battery can be calculated as:
T = 3500 × 0.8 ÷ 2.437 ≈ 1149(days ) ≈ 3.1( years ) (6)
From the result, the working life is longer than 1 years and
its performance is better than other products in the market,
which can meet the requirements of low power communication.
After 100 days of normal operation, the power supply voltage
of the trigger decreases from 3.7V to 3.67V. The power
consumption is about one-tenth of battery capacity, normal
working voltage of 3.3V. It is basically consistent with the
theoretical calculation results. According to the 1~2 years life
expectancy of products in the market, the scheme proposed in
this paper has better power consumption performance.
V. CONCLUSION AND PROSPECT
The safety management of manhole covers is an important
issue in urban construction. As the entrance of underground
pipe network, the manhole covers are large and often damaged
that cause various accident. Then the intelligent monitoring of
manhole covers plays a vital role. According to the actual
demand, the application of LoRa in intelligent manhole cover
monitoring is investigated. By using the monitoring device to
test and verify, the results show that LoRa can achieve low-
power and long-distance communication between the
monitoring nodel and the sink node, improve the system
performance. It is suitable for solving the problem of urban
road manhole cover management. Intelligent manhole cover
monitoring system based on LoRa is helpful to improve the
safety management level of urban road manhole cover, reduce
the artificial pressure, and achieve remote online real-time
monitoring.In the trend of "all things interconnected", as the
representative technology of LPWAN, LoRa will continue to
develop and play an important role in the application of the
Internet of Things.
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