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Design and implementation of object tracking system based on LoRa

Conference Paper · January 2017

DOI: 10.1109/ICOIN.2017.7899535

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 Design and Implementation of object tracking system
based on LoRa
Dong Hyun Kim, Jung Bin Park, Jae Ho Shin, and Jong Deok Kim*
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Pusan National University
Pusan, South Korea
{dhkim1106, jbpark, pluss2, kimjd}@pusan.ac.kr

Abstract— Internet of Things(IoT) technology is an global SemTech and IBM consume a little more power than UNB
infra that offers intellectual services combined with situation technology does, but has low interference of electric wave. The
recognizing knowledge and communication between humans and maximum speed is 100Kbps. The LoRa Alliance has been
objects and among objects, which has become core technology in organized to pursue standardization. Also, like UNB, it uses
hyper-connected society with its Cloud and big data technology. unlicensed band of ISM band.
To connect objects, low range and low power communication
technology was needed, therefore, RoLaWAN technology was Accordingly, using IoT and LPWAN technology, we are
developed. We suggest object tracking and managing system going to design and realize bicycle location management
based on RoLaWAN technology. Firstly, required service of the system and shows its efficiency.
tracking and managing system will be explained, then, the system
will be designed and realized. Also, we will present efficiency of
RoLaWAN technology’s application.
II. RELATED RESEARCH & REQUIRED SERVICES
Keywords— LPWAN, LoRa, Tracking System, IoT
A. Analazing LoRa’s performance
I. INTRODUCTION
LoRa is IoT optimized communication technology, which is
one of LPWAN technologies. Unlike other communication
IoT technology is a technology or environment that technology, the LPWAN covers larger range of
transfers data through Internet in real time to attach sensor to communication and uses, which is suitable for IoT and IoST
object. Until now, devices connected to Internet needs some
where small amount of data is transferred.
adjustment by humans to exchange data, But IoT enables to
exchange data between humans and objects and among objects To identify the overall features of LoRa communication, we
connected with Cloud and big data technology without the conducted experiment in outdoor environment and moving
adjustment. environment.
To show the best performance depending on
To transfer object’s data efficiently, LPWAN technology communication environment, LoRa supports 10 kinds of
was suggested, which is a mobile radio communication communication modes.
network and a low power broadband convergence network for As we increased the distance between gateway and node by
devices of IoT. 500m, we checked PDR depending on mode 1, 5, and 10.
If near field communication technologies such as BLE and
Zigbee for smart form and smart building are applied, person
who offers IoT service needs to undergo complex procedure of
smart home gateway and smartphone. But LPWAN solves this
problem but to connect directly. This technology is useful in
outdoor application area where a number of devices are
required.
LPWAN technology has been through the standardization
process as it becomes commercialized like other technologies
in ICT area. The technology that already starts to serve is
UNB(Ultra Narrow Band). The French company, Sigfox, has
started the service and ETSI, the European standards institute
has started to standardize it in the name of LTN(Low
Throughput Networks). The LoRaWAN developed by

* : Corresponding Author

978-1-5090-5124-3/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE 463 ICOIN 2017


Figure 1. PDR depending on communication distance in
mode 1,5, and 10
Figure 1 shows changes of PDR depending on different
communication distance in mode 1, 5, and 10. In low mode,
data transmission ratio is high but data rate is low. Since
transmission ratios in mode 1 and mode 5 shows similar
pattern, environment in certain area significantly affects
communication. Seeing the graph of mode 10, lower the SF
and longer the distance in nLoS environment, communication
quality rapidly decreases.
Table 1. Values depending on distance and parameter in
mode 1
Sent packet, received information, received packet, time out,
success rate. Table 1 shows different values depending on
each parameter and distance in mode 1.
SNR and Last Packet RSSI are highly related to successful
transmission rate; Higher the SNR, higher the successful
communication rate and also, higher the Last packet RSSI
than sensitivity, higher the successful communication rate.
464
When transmission is successful, there is difference in
absolute value of each SF between SNR and Last Packet RSSI.
For example, mode 1 is 117, Mode 5 to 114, Mode 10 to
111.
Figure 2. RSSI values depending on distance while moving
Table 2. Values depending on distance in mode 5 and
parameters
Figure 2 shows RSSI values depending on distance while
movie and Table 2 show values depending on distance in
mode 5 and parameters.
As it moves to the point of 1.0km where communication is
active to the one of 1.5km where communication is less active,
the decrease of packet RSSI has been observed. The result of
real packet shows that every case has filed when packet RSSI
was lower than sensitivity.
B. Primary services
Bicycle tracking and managing system based on LoRa has
classified the services into basic service and additional one.
Basic service includes management service that enables to see
the public location of bicycle in website and dynamic
geofence service that gives users alarm signal when GPS
attached to the bicycle is out of area that users have set in
advance.
Additional services include weather check service, dragon
radar SNS, GCM Notification and tracking service. More
characteristics are as follows.
1. Weather Check Service
Weather is important factor for users who uses a bicycle.
With weather API, weather information can be checked in
App and details can be also checked by connected links.
 2. Dragon Radar SNS The process of data transmission is as follows. Firstly, end
Social Network Serice is the one of user friendly services. device attains values of sensor in devices. End device transfers
Users with the same hobby and purpose can share their sensing data to gateway using LoRa communication. The
location and also send messages. Meshlium saves data in the internal MySQL database and
transfers to IoTF of IBM Blemix by MQTT protocol from
3. GCM Notification Bluemix MQTT API.
With GCM Notification, sers can receive an alarm signal, If the Bluemix is in moving statement, data in IoTF is saved
for example, when their bicycle is out of certain area. to MongoDB. Lastly, if users request data to server, server
delivers the data saved in MongoDB to users. The
4. Tracking Service communication protocol used in this time is HTTP(REST
Through GPS data, users can check their route and exercise API).
information from sensor data.
IV. IMPLEMENTATION
III. SYSTEM DESIGN
A. Hardware

Figure 4. Hardware components and completely assembled

form
Figure 3. Structure of system

The structure of system is composed of end device, gateway,

Table 3. Meshlium LoRa Radio Specification
server, database and user web and application. For the end
device Waspmote is used attached with internal acceleration
sensor, GPS sensor and SX1272 of LoRa module. For the
gateway, Meshlium is used, which is based on Linux OS, has
SX1272 of LoRa Module, and offers Bluemix MQTT API.
For the server and database, the data provided by IBM
Bluemix and database by Mongo DB are used. IBM Bluemix
that serves a role of server, the Broker called IoTF receives
data and transfer to Bluemix server. Then the data is saved to
Mongo DB, in which data is provided in Cloud form in
Bluemix. Another component of user web and application
means website and application that users can see the stored Figure 4 shows node components used in end node and
data. The map in website and app uses Google Map Open API. assembled form to be installed in a bicycle and table 3 shows
The website is created with Bootstrap and shown to users as gateway device and description of the device.
reaction type. The app has functions to realize various services The main components of end node are Waspmote -open
that are going to be served to individual users. source based single board micro-controller- SX1272 –

465
communication module that supports LoRoWAN network in
868/900MHz bandwidth-, GPS to collect location data and
battery to provide power to Waspmote.

B. Network configuration

1. Setting initial parameter

Figure 6. Sending GPS data and sensor values to gateway
A. Channel: No. 9 (Center frequency: 922.52MHz) through frame
B. Coding rate: 4/5
C. Bandwidth: 125KHz
D. Spreading factor: 12

Data rate varies by spreading factor and bandwidth. The

system was designed to automatically set optimized data rate
depending on current network state. Figure 7. Saving the frame in internal DB sent by
Waspmote in Meshlium gateway
There was an API that controls Duty Cycle but it was hard
to set Downlink of End node in real time, which was not
useful. To substitute this, we used the acceleration sensor of
the End node, measured slope of node, decided that the node
was moved if certain degree of slope was changed and
realized the system as a duty cycle controlling method.
The assigned criteria of duty cycle were 15km/h, which is
average speed of a bicycle. If a bicycle is moving with the
speed of 15km/h, we wake the node every 100 to 100m and
find GPS. If it is not moving, wake the node every 3 minutes
assuming that the radius of Geofence is set as 500m to 1km.
Wireless transmission features limited communication in
nLoS(non-Line of Sight) area, which becomes a problem
when using communication while riding a bicycle an in rural
area. To solve this problem, we contributed to raising
successful transmission rate by using method that resends data
maximum three times if ACK is not arrived within timeout.

V. EXPERIMENT AND PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

Figure 5. Experiment environment

Figure 5 shows the experiment environment. The
Waspmote installed in a bicycle saves data in IBM Bluemix
by using gateway and offers services to website and mobile
APP.
Figure 8. Main page of Android App
Figure 6 shows sending GPS data and sensor values to the
gateway through frame and Figure 7 shows saving the frame
in internal DB sent by Waspmote in Meshlium gateway.

466
Figure 8 shows the capture page of Geofence, dragonSNS,
Exercise and log of app operated by saved data.
VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
IoT technology enables to monitor status of object in real
time when Internet is not connected by providing connections
between humans and objects and among obejcts. To support
IoT technology efficiently, the LPWAN technology has been
suggested and LoRaWAN technology of LPWAN was used to
develop bicycle location tracking and managing system in this
paper.
At first, we designed the overall construction of the system,
identified necessary services, and designed and realized the
system. The system was actually attached to the bicycle and its
practicability was analyzed.
We are going to keep studying on various communication
technology to offer services in a broaden area based on this
research.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the ICT R&D program of
MSIP/IITP. [2015(1711021663) Research on Implementation
467
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