Long range technology for internet of things: review, challenges, and future directions

Abstract

New networking issues are presented by the increasing need for a wide variety of applications, which has spurred the creation of a new internet of things (IoT) paradigm, such as long range (LoRa). The LoRa protocol uses a patented kind of spread spectrum modulation to provide low-power, long-range communication. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of LoRa-IoT in terms of IoT applications, LoRa class, security and privacy requirements, and the evolution of LoRa technology. This review analysis and compares long range wide area network (LoRaWAN) to wireless technology (e.g., Bluetooth, LoRa, 5G, Sigfox, long term evolution-M (LTE-M), Wi-Fi, Z-wave, Zigbee) and provides a list of environment simulators (e.g., OMNeT++, MATLAB, ns-3, SimPy) to carry out experiment for LoRa-IoT. Finally, this review does not only review literature recently studied for LoRa-IoT but also discusses challenges and future directions.