Hindawi

Mobile Information Systems

Volume 2022, Article ID 1526021, 12 pages
https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/1526021

Research Article
Future Trends for Healthcare Monitoring System in Smart Cities
Using LoRaWAN-Based WBAN

Imen Bouazzi,1,2 Monji Zaidi,2,3 Mohammed Usman,3

Mohammed Zubair Mohammed Shamim,3 Vinit Kumar Gunjan ,4,5 and Ninni Singh 5

1
Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, King Khalid University, Saudi Arabia
2
Electronic and microelectronic Laboratory, Monastir University, Tunisia
3
Department of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering, King Khalid University, Saudi Arabia
4
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, CMR Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, 501401 Telangana, India
5
University of Science and Technology Chattogram, Bangladesh

Correspondence should be addressed to Ninni Singh; ninni.singh@ustc.ac.bd

Received 23 March 2022; Revised 7 April 2022; Accepted 16 April 2022; Published 5 May 2022

Academic Editor: M. Praveen Kumar Reddy

Copyright © 2022 Imen Bouazzi et al. 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.

LoRa technology is extensively utilized in the Internet of Things world. It allows a transmission of a low volume of data through
small wireless devices. The principle of LoRa networks is to transmit data over the air from sensors with low transmission range,
for about tens of kilometers. Those sensors are not expected to be powered by electricity, and they are powered by batteries. We
understand that visits to hospitals cannot be eliminated and that visits for full examinations were necessary, but technological
progress nowadays could reduce the burden on hospitals thanks to remote controls and treatments in homes using those
wireless sensors. So, the use of LoRaWAN protocol could greatly make diagnostic of patients more easily by transmitting data
between doctors and patients in a real time manner. The aim of this work is to evaluate the performance of a network that
contains numerous mobile sensors. Those sensors connect the doctors, nurse, and patient through a reliable and secure
wireless network. Here, we want to evaluate various factors of LoRaWAN protocol that have a big effect on power
consumption and data transmission delay.. Moreover, our LoRa-based networking implementation, based on software
simulations, appears to be an option that allows for a robust, reliable, and lower overall cost IoT deployment and low
bandwidth requirements. With LoRa, we can achieve similar or better link quality to IEEE 802.15.4, with higher data rate and
lower costs.

1. Introduction has a high transmission rate to transmit information and

Wireless body area networks (WBAN), which use the
human body as a data transmission medium, have attracted
the attention of several researchers around the world. If we
confirm that the future is associated with the Internet of
Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), the speed of
data transmission will be a critical issue to be improved in
the network since the speed of data transmission per second
has a great impact on the development of services of all
kinds. We know that the wireless sensor network (WSN)
suffers from the low power of transmission between sensors;
this weakness can lead to problems in transmission
reliability. Today, developers use the 5G technology that
signals. For this reason, a marriage between 5G technology
and wireless sensor networks has been completed to
improve the next generation of the telecommunications
world. To use WBAN with this new technology, it is prohib-
ited to extend wireless communication system to support
high frequency band of transmission and multiantenna sys-
tem that should be developed and taking into consideration
the power efficiency of each node.
New generations of related items will best be capable of
expand if it is miles feasible to cause them to completely
power self-sufficient, even if the usage of batteries or cells
solves part of this hassle by ensuring autonomy that can be
important with relatively low costs. Indeed, for many
2 Mobile Information Systems

Table 1: Comparison between different specifications of network technology [2–4].

Energy
Network technologies Topology Radiofrequency Range Data rate
consumption
BLE Ad hoc 2.4 GHz 10 m 1-2 Mb/s Very low
Zigbee Mesh 868.3 MHz, 902-928 MHz, 2.4 GHz 100 m 0.02-0.25 Mb/s Low
WIFI Star 2.4 GHz Less than 1 km 11 Mb/s-10 Gb/s High
SigFox Star Between 862 and 928 MHz 10 km 100-600 b/s Medium
LoRaWAN Star or peer to peer Between 860 and1020 MHz Less than 30 km Up to 50 Kb/s Very low

applications, connected objects are deployed in environ-
ments that are difficult to be reached by humans. So, replac-
ing or maintaining batteries becomes complicated or even
impossible. In addition, another major concern is linked to
the limited lifetime duration of the batteries, which makes
the autonomy of the communicating object totally depen-
dent on its energy source. In recent years, many technologies
have been developed and introduced to solve the problem of
energy consumption such as ZigBee, Bluetooth, and LoRa-
WAN. With the rise of WSN, low-power wide area networks
(LPWAN) are taken into consideration as one of the key
solutions for optimizing energy consumption and it has
improved its efficiency to enable the new human healthcare
and wireless monitoring applications.
The important challenge of many countries is to improve
their healthcare system to be more efficient, more coordinated,
and to be ready for any pandemic like coronavirus disease
2019 (COVID-19). To be a good competitor in the healthcare
system, the use of recent trends of technologies will be a
requirement. The use of technology can be a feasible solution
to reduce the expenditure of handicap monitoring, people in
quarantine, and people with chronic disease. The IoT provides
a world of connected devices to a cloud-based applications and
services, with different cooperation mechanisms, a proper
standardization, progressed sensors with inexpensive, and
low-power microprocessors [1]. According to Table 1, LoRa-
WAN is considered one of the best IoT solutions based on
the healthcare monitoring system due to its high communica-
tion range and perfect interoperability between IoT sensors.
This work opens a way to compare the main LPWAN
technologies as presented in the following table and to assess
their performance and choose the best solution for trans-
forming to smart cities that contains many wireless connected
devices. Remaining parts of this paper are organized as fol-
lows: Section 2 gives associated work to LPWAN technologies
and energy consumption improvement. Next, in Section 3, a
survey about wireless body area network will be discussed.
Section 4 provides an overview of the LoRaWAN protocol.
In Section 5, we discuss the theoretical parameters that may
affect energy consumption and data transmission using the
LoRaWAN protocol. Simulation results proving the efficiency
of LoRaWAN parameters on the energy per useful bit will be
carried out. Finally, Section 7 concludes the paper.
2. Related Work
In recent years, many applications are achieved to widely lay
out the evaluation of the next generation of mobile commu-
nication and wireless sensor network and to improve the
healthcare monitoring system. The authors in [5, 6] inte-
grated a 5G system in WSN application that improves
energy consumption and provides a secure healthcare sys-
tem. They are interested in the new generation of mobile
communication in the WBAN, where they use a connection
between small smart devices via 5G technology to establish
connection between numerous intelligent sensors at the
same time. However, authors in [7] have used new three-
factor rapid authentication technologies to hide user recog-
nition in wireless sensors networks based on 5G technology.
The use of the 5G technology and wireless sensor network
contributes to the progress of the electronic healthcare sys-
tem. Each user should be identified by a biometric, pass-
word, and a smart card with a time bounded identification
to register with the server. The concept of hospital of future
was discussed in [8] where authors proposed a reconfigur-
able hybrid radio communication system based on radio-
connectivity and wireless optics. This proposed solution
uses an optical transmission, enhance the redundancy,
minimize the throughput, and minimize the spectrum
congestion. Enemy warfare attract some authors in [9],
where they implemented an automatic healthcare monitor-
ing system to track location of soldiers in real time; they
use Arduino board kit and IoT technology with a Wi-Fi
module to control problems that can face soldiers as gas
leakage and bombs by using sensors to detect any sudden
health problems.
Due to the continuous monitoring of patient‘s health,
sensor nodes will consume a lot of energy during sensing
and transmitting data. Without an estimated technique for
data transmission and data gathering, the performance of
the WBAN can be degraded. Several works like [10–13]
address the energy consumption problems in WSN using a
fuzzy algorithm to schedule the data transmission under
MAC layer. Many works have been carried out on the energy
efficiency in WSN and especially in WBAN as investigated
in the review paper [14]. That work conducts a survey on
LPWAN in WBAN to improve the healthcare monitoring
of patients while satisfying quality of system requirement
in terms of energy efficiency, latency, and data transmission
rate. They cited the advantage and disadvantage of different
communication techniques of such as LoRa, LPWAN, NB-
IoT, and SigFox. Recently, many researchers focus on the
relation between patients and doctors to assure a reliable
connection between them especially in a harsh environment
such as rural area, while at the same time, they focus on
reducing the energy consumption of IoT devices [15].
Mobile Information Systems 3

Table 2: Comparative analyses using the LoRaWAN protocol in the literature.

Ref. LoRa transceiver Reliability metric LoRa parameter Band

[17] SX1278 PLR, RTT Location, payload, power, CR 433 MHz
[18] SX1276 RSSI SF, CR 868 MHz
[19] NA PLR Weather 912 MHz
[20] SX1272 RSSI Distance 868 MHz
[21] SX1301 RSSI Location 868 MHz
[22] SX1278 PDR SF, location, SNR 430 MHz
[23] RN2483 SNR ISM band 434 MHz, 868 MHz
[24] IC880A RSSI, SNR, PLR Location 868 MHz
[25] IC880A Rate, position RSSI Location 868 MHz
[26] SX1272 SNR, ToA, energy per useful bit SF, CR, power, SNR 868 MHz

Energy efficiency in LoRa-based networks, especially
when using the LoRaWAN protocol, is a well-studied topic.
The authors in [16] studied the effect of LoRaWAN param-
eters together with stated transmission, scatter factor, encod-
ing speed, payload length, and data range. This optimization
study presented a trade-off among LoRaWAN communica-
tion range, propagation factor, and power transmission.
[16] was very interesting for the choice and configuration
of LoRa parameters. Several researchers tried to enhance
the quality of service (QoS) to find the better solution that
guarantee a high data transmission delay and a secure link
that does not affect the energy consumption. Table 2 pre-
sents recent works in the literature that uses LoRaWAN
technology where each one used a different method com-
pared with others; they used different types of LoRaWAN
sensor transceiver chip that support devices of class A, B,
and C. In almost of those researches, energy saving in LoRa
networks has been improved; most of them deal with
LoRaWAN parameters and the trade-off between energy
consumption, location, reliability, and distance. Since mini-
mizing information is a realistic energy-saving approach,
we will focus on this work on the data transmission period
and its impact on energy consumption.
3. Wireless Body Area Network: WBAN
WBAN uses the electric field of the human body to transmit
data wirelessly, for example, from the music player to the
headphones, from the electronic key of the car in the pocket
to the unlocking system of the doors, or from the cardiac
sensor to the control unit worn around the belt. This amaz-
ing technology, pioneered in the United States by IBM and
MIT for the wearable computer perspective, is the subject
of intense research around the world. In WBAN, sensors
are used to monitor, to collect, and to transmit medical
signals and other information about the human body like
electroencephalography (EEG), electrocardiography (ECG),
and temperature, directly to a node known as “sink node”
as shown in Figure 1. Collected data will be then be trans-
mitted via the LoRaWAN gateway that is installed in the
hospital, and then, it will be sent to the doctors and nurse
to be analyzed.
LoRa end devices LoRa gateway installed at
connected to patients hospital and public area
Medical clinic
LoRa
LoRa
Doctors
Local server installed at
hospital
ser
ver
Distance up to 30 km
Figure 1: Application of LoRaWAN in a hospital.
WBANs differ from typical wireless sensor networks on
a large scale, and they are characterized by mobility in the
network which follows the movements of the human body
and the quality of the links which varies according to the
posture of the wearer. Also, the transmitting power of the
sensors is kept low in order to improve their autonomy
and to reduce the exposure to the electromagnetic waves of
the carriers. Therefore, considering the absorption, reflec-
tion, and interference effects of the body, it is difficult to
maintain a direct connection between the “sink” and the
other nodes. LoRaWAN can support wireless devices con-
nected in the same network to a distance of 30 km, it means
that it can be a good solution for transforming to smart cities
and a good IoT solution to improve the healthcare domain
specially in recent years where we had faced many chronic
diseases. In the current context of health crisis and in the
face of COVID-19, European health authorities have put in
place new recommendations imposing temperature and
CO2 thresholds to be respected. They have installed new
IoT sensors to measure the indoor air quality in hospitals,
for example, it is considered that above 1000 ppm in the
indoor environment, the health of occupants is at risk [27].
The objective of those IoT solutions is to improve the health
of occupants and nursing staff in hospitals and to consider
the recommendations of the health authorities. As an
4 Mobile Information Systems
Lora WAN
gateway
Loraa
rs
sensors
Connection
Lora
Figure 2: LoRaWAN technology.
example, a total of 87 of wireless radio sensors were installed
in the two Madrid hospitals on LoRaWAN wireless technol-
ogy in a private mode. 79 of transmitters, specifically
designed for indoor applications, have been installed in
order to check whether the sanitary conditions (CO2,
VOC, ambient temperature, and humidity) are respected.
As a study case, we have five companies operating within
the subject of the Internet of Things. [28] [29] [30] [31] have
come together to design a system intended for healthcare
personnel and aimed at equipping hospitals with emergency
call buttons connected with LoRaWAN long-range, low-
power radiotechnology. This system flags patients requiring
immediate attention and allows medical personnel to locate
and identify these calls in real time. The call button device
allows patients to report an emergency at any time. This
waterproof, compact, and easy-to-clean “sensor” incorpo-
rates a Bluetooth detector that can immediately identify
and locate the equipment or person concerned. It can also
measure ambient temperature and detect physical contact
through a built-in speaker. Nurses then have real-time access
to essential information about patients’ emergency calls and
the location of their beds.
4. LoRaWAN Overview
4.1. LoRaWAN Protocol. IoT is a network where objects are
related to the Internet. Its implementation requires the use
of low-power wide area network (LPWAN) in order to sup-
port connected objects. These are low-power, long-range
communication networks. It is precisely to install these net-
works that the LoRaWAN protocol was developed. This pro-
tocol reduces the consumption of connected devices.
LoRaWAN is a media access control type protocol allowing
low-data rate communication and low energy consumption.
This protocol is widely used in the context of smart cities,
industrial monitoring, or even agriculture. LoRaWAN has
becomes an interesting method access in smart sensing
application using IoT. This new technology belongs to the
The things Application
network server
Connection
IP
LPWAN networks. LoRaWAN has improved a greater effi-
ciency regarding other access method to the medium like
CSMA and ALOHA [32]. It has enhanced the collision ratio,
but it is not considered a good optimizer for energy con-
sumption for many nodes. Due to its low cost, high data rate,
energy efficiency, and improved packet delivery ratio, LoRa
attracts a lot of researchers and industrial in different fields
ranging from environment monitoring to application in
smart cities and smart homes. LoRaWAN support three
types of end devices, namely, class A, B, and C where each
device is characterized by a specific data frame transmission
[33, 34], while end devices can always send uplinks, the
device’s class determines when it can receive downlinks.
Class A has the lowest energy consumption where the data
frame transmission support only in the uplink. However, a
device in group B allows a compromise among power con-
sumptions and the need for two-way communication. These
devices open reception windows at a scheduled interval by
periodic messages sent by the server. Devices from group
C have the highest power consumption but it provides bidi-
rectional communications that are not programmed where
the devices have an everlasting listening window.
Figure 2 gives the architecture of LoRa topology. The
network topology supported here is called a star-of-star
because a network server is connected to a multitude of gate-
ways that are themselves connected to a multitude of end
devices. In the network, the end devices are not connected
to the gateways; they have only used them as relays to reach
the server that manages the network, which is itself
connected to one or more application servers. The packets
sent by the end devices are retransmitted by the gateways
after adding only information concerning the quality of the
signal received.
Today, there are a wide number of technologies that are
used under the MAC layer in order to access the medium,
like LoRaWAN, SigFox, and CSMA/CA. Also, there are sev-
eral numbers of researches that use LoRaWAN technology
in such application like data monitoring and energy
Mobile Information Systems
DC–DC
conveter
LoRa WAN
radio
Sensor node
Figure 3: IoT end device.
efficiency. Compared to other wireless technology, LoRa-
WAN is the most useful technology in the wireless sensor
network due to its flexibility, low energy consumption, and
its low cost. Technological progress, nowadays, has led to
use LoRa technology and the 5G network together to support
smart cities that can be adapted to different environmental
conditions and especially in healthcare applications. Using
WBAN, healthcare monitoring of patient status can be done
easily using LoRa technology even in the rural area. In this
work, a study of different wireless technology supported in
the IoT are discussed and compared to prove the weakness
and advantage of each one of them using simulation analysis.
4.2. LoRaWAN End Devices. Sensors are used to monitor
and pick up any information in different environments
to prevent any issues before having major problems.
Researchers focus of data transmission between nodes to
enhance cost and power consumption while improving
workplace productivity. Data transmission depends on
itself by the protocol of communication used to handle
communication between nodes. RA ecent standard used
in IoT application is the well-known LoRaWAN standard
that approved its efficiency in long range and high perfor-
mance in network operations. IoT sensors harvest infor-
mation and send them using LoRaWAN gateways; then,
those gateways transfer data through a cloudy system that
process data and store them in a database to be retrieved later
by the user. Here, the user received data by end device’s that
are considered a radio bridge console. Technology is the key
secret of success of most of organizations whatever its service:
healthcare, manufacturing, aerospace, and telecommunica-
tion. So, improving their productivity depends on the system
they used to handle data and treat it.
LoRa devices are an electronic system belonging to the
IoT world having low consumption, small size, low power,
and low cost. They have a LoRa radio to reach the gateways.
The gateways are not addressed specifically: all those present
in the coverage area receive the messages and process them.
Any LoRa device is composed of a customized electronic
board composed of a microcontroller, energy module,
LoRaWAN radio module, wireless module, sensing module,
5
USB
SPI
Memory
Micro
controller Sensor
unit interface
Power supply units
Battery
nPreamble_symbols nHeader_symbols
Header CRC Payload
Preamble Payload
Explicit mode only CRC
CR = 4/8 CR = coding rate
SF = spreading factor
Figure 4: LoRaWAN packet structure.
and interface USB and converter as presented in Figure 3.
This chip has a small size and can be integrated in any space.
The microcontroller is considered a central data processing
unit which is connected to almost all of the components of
the sensor device. A serial peripheral interface SPI is used
to connect between the microcontroller and the LoRaWAN
radio module along with digital input output lines I/O. An
868 MHz monopole antenna is connected to the wireless
module for radio communication. A universal serial bus
(USB) interface is used for microcontroller firmware upload.
4.3. LoRaWAN Packet Structure. To calculate the LoRa
packet time transmission on air, we need to start by calculat-
ing the size of the payload. As mentioned in Figure 4, an
implicit or explicit LoRaWAN packet consists of three main
parts. The packet begins with a preamble which is used for
synchronization between end devices and the gateway; after,
we found the header which is considered optional and is
used to indicate the scale of the payload and some other data
related to LoRa parameters, its value is fixed to CR = 4/8 and
then the payload who comes with an adjustable value of CR
and with a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) who comes on
the end of the packet frame.
5. Discussion and Performance Metrics
LoRaWAN consumes extremely low energy. It used a sim-
plified version of the additive links on-line Hawaii area
6 Mobile Information Systems

1 Start
2 DevEUI = node’s unique identifier;
3 AppEUI = application identifier;
4 DevNonce, AppNonce =2-octet nonce;
5 NetID = network identifier;
6 DevAddr = end-device address;
7 Begin
8 While until the time end do
9 Nodes send a join request
10 Join-request (AppEUI, DevEUI, DevNonce)
11 Search for nearest cluster to join
12 Search for root nodes (JoinEUI,DevEUI,DevNonce)
13 Network servers accept all demand of join
14 Join-accept = (AppNonce,NetID,devAddr,RxDelay);
15 End

Procedure 1: Join network of all N, M nodes

(ALOHA) protocol for the MAC layer and cyclic transmis-

sion in each subband. Parameters used in the optimization
of energy during the transmission-reception cycle are con-
figured based of node status (transmission, reception,
standby, and sleep), the information transmission strategy,
and the power transmission. The power consumption of
nodes (end equipment) of the LoRaWAN network is chosen
according to the use of the four main modes (transmit,
receive, standby, and sleep) and the time spent in each
mode. The authors in [14] modelled the energy consump-
tion from these four modes, in order to compare the con-
sumption of a long-range linear wireless sensor network
designed by ZigBee or LoRaWAN. Energy consumption
depends mainly on several factors: the quantity of data
transferred (in number of messages and/or size of messages),
as well as the transmission power required to transmit this
data, and the spectrum spreading factor (SF).
Through this paper, we desire to improve the perfor-
mance of LoRaWAN in terms of energy consumption. We
used NS-3 as a simulator tool for the wireless sensor network
[35]. In order to optimize the energy consumption, LoRa-
WAN protocol allows a dynamic set of SF parameter to
reduce the consumption of the end devices, as well as to free
up radio bandwidth and therefore to limit collisions. So, in
the first step, we are going to study in more detail the impact
of these different parameters in the network performance.
The energy consumption of a LoRa system depends on sev-
eral parameters such as
(i) Quantity of data to be sent (payload)
(ii) Spreading factor
(iii) Collisions during transmission (and therefore
retransmission)
(iv) Request for acknowledgment of the frames sent
(v) Duty-cycle
(vi) Transmit energy of the transceiver
(vii) Power consumed in standby between 2 transmissions
Table 3: Calculated time on air for a specified SF value.
Spreading factor (SF) Airtime (ms)
7 41
8 72
10 289
11 578
6. Network Model
6.1. Algorithm Specification. The network model is a star
topology that contains 100 nodes. Each one can be con-
nected to the personal area network (PAN) coordinator.
The good advantage of this type of topology is that it is
highly reliable. This network contains a combination of
static and mobile nodes, so the failure of one or some nodes
cannot cause a significant problem in the network opera-
tions since many other nodes are available to maintain sta-
bility in the network. In this network, there are some
nodes considered end devices and gateway router devices
that are used to forward each received router packet to the
network server and execute transmission request coming
from the server. In the developed algorithm, we suppose that
the network contains N mobile nodes and M static nodes.
6.2. Energy Model Assumption. To compute the energy con-
sumed in the network, we should suppose some assump-
tions; first, we considered that the energy was consumed
while the radio module transmit data is constant. Whereas
the energy consumed while the processing data is considered
a variable value and it depends on the function of the sensor
node, it is known that sensor node goes into a sleep period
while they are neither sensing nor sending data and the
energy consumed during this mode is statistically considered
zero. So, to compute the energy consumed of the rest of
operation mode, we assume that all its elements are active
during a specified period and inactive during the rest of
the cycle. The initial energy of all nodes is the same for all
Mobile Information Systems 7

Figure 5: Network topology.

devices which is equal to 1 J. Lets define the hole energy con-

sumed as follows:
Table 4: Simulation parameters.
Etot = EActive period + ESleep mode , ð1Þ Parameters Value
Frequency 846 GHz
where Etot , EActive period , and ESleep mode are, respectively, the
Initial energy 1J
initial energy of the node, the energy consumed by the node,
Energy consumed in Tx
and the energy consumed during the sleep phase. We said 3.2 MW
mode
that the energy of inactive period is nearly about zero so
the total energy consumed can be calculated as presented in Transmission power -10 dBm
Nodes 100
Etot = EActive period , ð2Þ Data packet size 100 bytes
5 MW for joint request/25 MW for
Tx power
with data
Bandwidth 125 kHz
EActive period = E0 + ESensing + Edata + ERadio + ESending + ELoad , Data rate 250 bps
ð3Þ Spreading factor 6 to 12
Bandwidth 125 kHz, 250 kHz, 500 kHz
where E0 , ESensing , Edata , ERadio , ESending , and ELoad are the Coding rate CR 4/5 to 4/8
energy consumed during the initialization of the system, Power -1 to 14 dB
the energy consumed while sensing, the energy consumed
in data processing, the energy consumed in the radio, the
energy used to send data, and the energy consumed in the
sensing for the channel, respectively.
8 Mobile Information Systems

1% 90%
TMCU

Power consumption

Data transmission

Reception of ACK
Data processing
System wake up

Wake up ratio

Sleep period
Sensing
TWU TX TP TTr TD TR TS

Time

Figure 6: Operation mode of a sensor node.

Table 5: Relationship between LoRa parameter and functional mode of a sensor node.

Mode LoRa parameters Descriptions

BW = 250 kHz
1 SF = 11 This mode allows to have long communication distances with medium binary rates
CR = 4/5
BW = 250 kHz
2 SF = 9 Temporary mode
CR = 4/5
BW = 500 kHz
3 SF = 7 This mode allows to have high bit rates but with minimal LoRaWAN ranges
CR = 4/5

To study the autonomy of a sensor node, it is prohib- 120

ited to model the power consumption of each unit of the
node as follows:
100


Energy per useful bit (uJ)

E0 = Epros F pros × T 0 , 80



ESensing = Ppros F pros + PSensing × T Sensing ,


60
Edata = Epros F pros × T data F pros ,


ð4Þ
ERadio = Ppros F pros + PRadio × T Radio , 40



ESensing = Ppros F pros + PSensing × T Sensing ,


20
ELoad = Ppros F pros + PLoad × T Load :
0
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Clearly, the energy of each unit depends of the fre-
quency of the processor F pros and the power consumed Payload (bits)
by the microprocessor Ppros . The time needed by the pro-
SF = 7, CR = 4/6
cessor to process data is equal to T p where the latter can SF = 9, CR = 4/5
be calculated as follows: SF = 11, CR = 4/5

N inst Figure 7: Effect of variation in SF on energy per payload bit,

Tp = , ð5Þ CR = 4/5.
f MCU
Mobile Information Systems 9

40

35

30

Energy per useful bit (uJ)

25

20

15

10

0
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

Playload (bits)

CR = 4/5, SF = 7
CR = 4/6, SF = 7
CR = 4/8, SF = 7

Figure 8: Effect of variation of CR and maintaining SF = 7 on the energy.

where N inst is the number of instructions executed by the and header duration, and payloadSymbNb is the number
processor, and here, we assume that we have one instruc- of symbols in payload period. As an example, Table 3 cal-
tion per clock period. Also, we can compute the time culates the spreading factor (SF) with time on air men-
needed to transmit data as presented in tioned for a bandwidth equal to 250 kHz.
To evaluate the effect of LoRaWAN parameter on the
T data = N bit × T bit , ð6Þ energy consumption of each node, we can calculate the
energy per useful bit denoted Ebit , which is used in order
Where N bit presents the number of sent bits and T bit to evaluate the energy consumption of the sensor node.
presents the transmission time of an information bit, The energy Ebit is calculated in the following equation:
respectively. Finally, we can define T MCU as the operating
time of the microprocessor. It depends on the operating Pcons ðPTr Þ ∗ T Paquet duration
Ebit = : ð13Þ
time of all the sensor units. T MCU is expressed as follows: 8PL

T MCU = T WU + T X + T Tr + T D + T R : ð7Þ So, we have

The following formula is used to calculate the LoRa Pcons ðPTr Þ ∗ N Payload + N p + 4:25 ∗ T Symbol
Ebit = , ð14Þ
Packet duration: 8PL


T pr = npr + 4:25 × T sym , ð8Þ where PL is the size of the payload and Pcons ðPTr Þ is the total
power. Using equation (12), the expression of energy per
   useful bit is calculated as shown in
8PL − 4SF + 28 + 16 − 20H
payloadSymbNb = 8 + max ceil ðCR + 4Þ, 0 ,
4ðSF − 2DEÞ

ð9Þ Pcons ðPTr Þ ∗ N Payload + N p + 4:25 ∗ 2SF
Ebit = : ð15Þ
8PL ∗ BW
T p = payloadSymbNb × T sym , ð10Þ
7. Simulation Results
T packet duration = T pr + T p , ð11Þ
7.1. Test Performance and Node Placement. To evaluate the
2SF ð12Þ
performance of LoRaWAN end devices which include 100
T sym = , end devices, the topology described in Figure 5 is used. We
BW
particularly evaluate the power consumption and ToA of
where T sym calculates the symbol duration in millisecond, LoRa to optimize the best configuration parameters that
PL calculates the payload size indicated in bytes, T pr cal- may affect the network performance. Simulation parameters
culates the preamble duration, T p indicates the payload are presented in Table 4.
10 Mobile Information Systems

1000

800

Time on air (ms)

600

400

200

0
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Playload (bytes)

SF = 12
SF = 10
SF = 7

Figure 9: Time on air vs. payload for different values of SF.

Various operating scenario modes of a sensor node are 70

presented in Figure 6. Each scenario allows us to define dif-
ferent functional modes, which are managed by the process- 60
ing unit. In order to measure and transmit information,
sensors begin by awakening the system from its hibernation
50
state. Then, the sensor makes periodic measurements to ver-
Time on air (ms)

ify the displacement of the structure. After that, it should

40
run out the necessary processing of the measured data.
This process mainly used for the most part depends on
30
the frequency of the microcontroller. Finally, the LoRaWAN
module is awakened in order to transmit the information
and receive an acknowledgment of reception to verify the 20
correct transmission of data. To optimize the consumption,
a microcontroller is put into a standby state at the end of 10
the operating cycle.
0
10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
7.2. Effect of SF and CR on the Energy Consumption. LoRa
Payload (bytes)
modulation has several configuration parameters such as
carrier frequency (CF), scatter factor (SF), bandwidth CR = 4/5 CR = 4/7
(BW), and encoding rate (CR). Those parameters present CR = 4/6 CR = 4/8
different levels of power consumption and different trans-
mission ranges where each parameter is specified as follows: Figure 10: Time on air vs. payload for different values of CR.

(i) Carrier frequency: present the central frequency used
during transmission. CF is 863-870 MHz in Europe
(ii) Spreading factor: define the number of bits per sym-
bol varying between 7 and 12. The higher the SF
value, the greater the receiver’s ability to receive data
with low signal-to-noise ratio value. Thus, the larger
the value of SF, the longer the transmission time
(iii) Bandwidth: presents the range of frequencies in the
transmission band of LoRaWAN and its value
ranges from 125 to 500 kHz
(iv) Coding rate: it is used to improve the efficiency of
LoRaWAN protocol by adding a cyclic error coding
(CRC) to the encoding process of data transmission.
The value of CR is equal to 4/ð4 + nÞ with n vary
from 1 to 4. The increase in the value of CR will
increase the reliability of LoRa, but it increases
energy consumption because of the large value of
CR that will increase time on air
In this part, we will evaluate the effect of LoRa parame-
ters on the power consumption by varying the value of SF,
Mobile Information Systems
CR, and BW. An optimization of these parameters makes it
possible to regulate the power consumption of the sensor
node and the data transmission delay. A node presents
different modes of transmission which are presented in
Table 5 and will be synthesized in the simulation.
As calculated in equation (15) that represents the rela-
tion between the consumed energy and the spreading factor
(SF), we can conclude that this parameter may affect the
energy as shown in Figure 7. This figure presents the evalu-
ation of power consumption per bit as a function of payload
for different values of SF. We noted that the consumed
energy decreases with the increase in the number of useful
bits. As stated previously, the larger value of SF, the longer
it takes to transmit one packet and consume more energy
to transmit data. When the value of the spreading factor
becomes high, the power consumption is high also; here,
we have the highest value of SF is 11.
Figure 8 presents the energy consumed per useful bit as a
function of payload and under different values of coding rate
(CR) (while maintaining SF fixed). When the coding rate
decreases (means increasing the number of coding bits),
the transmission time of a packet and the power consump-
tion increased too. These results show that an optimization
of LoRaWAN parameters such as SF, CR, and payload size
is a key element in reducing energy consumption for such
a communicating sensor. When the value of CR is low, the
energy consumption is high. So, the lowest value of CR is
4/5 in this experiment.
Figure 9 shows the variation of the ToA as function of
the payload while varying SF. Here, we can clearly see that
if SF is increased the ToA parameter will increase, too. The
variation of the transmission time on air depends on the
value of SF. For example, suppose that we take SF = 8 for
BW = 250 kHz, here, the value of the transmission time will
be equal to 60 ms. When we increased the value of SF for
example to 12, the value of the transmission time will be
increased also to 872 ms. This increase will affect the energy
consumption that will be approximately higher; it means that
each node will consume more energy while sending data. Here,
we can say that a good compromise to increase the ToA is to
change between the subbands of the reserved channel.
The impact of the CR on the transmission parameter
time on air is shown in Figure 10. It is noted that the
increase in the number of coding bits leads to an increase
in packet transmission time, which also leads to a higher
consumption of the radio module.
8. Conclusions
IoT sensor devices make the work within hospital or homes
more sophisticated. The use of recent trends in electronic
devices and protocol of communication may improve the
data transmission without loss and within a brief time. But
some devices need a good choice of batteries and a good
management of information to be powered during a long
period of time. One aspect of this research work consists of
minimizing the energy consumption in order to improve
the ease of use and to enhance the lifespan of the batteries,
which could ultimately lead to a network. In our future
11
work, we are ready to study the impact of other parameters
on the behavior of energy consumption between communi-
cating nodes through LoRaWAN technology, to mention
but not limited to, we can cite the packet delivery ratio
(PDR), throughput, and jitter.
Data Availability
The processed data are available upon request from corre-
sponding author.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgments
The authors extend their appreciation to the Deanship of
Scientific Research at King Khalid University for funding
this work through a general research project under grant
number (R.G.P.1/194/41).
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