Simulation based lora base station placement optimization for smart city scenarios

Abstract

With emerging IoT technologies and vision for smarter environments, the need for low power wide area (LPWA) communications have substantially increased. In the last decade, many LPWA technologies have been developed in order to fulfil the needs of IoT and wireless sensor network applications. Although wireless sensor network de sign, radio network design and antenna placement problems for cellular networks are thoroughly studied in the literature, the works on optimization of LPWA networks are scarcer. In this thesis, we mainly focus on a specific LPWA technology, LoRa and design of LoRa networks through optimal placement of LoRa gateways. We have de signed and implemented a novel simulation based optimization system and proposed multiple algorithms for optimizing LoRa gateway placement. In order to achieve bet ter placement of gateways, use of genetic algorithm and clustering algorithm based methods with multiple heuristics are proposed. Success of the proposed algorithms are evaluated via simulation and the promising results are shared with the reader.