Adaptive Data Rate Mechanism for Network Efficiency Evaluation in LoRaWAN-based Wireless Underground Sensor Networks

Abstract:

With the continuous acceleration of urbanization and the rapid advancement of the Internet of Things technology， the study of wireless sensor networks within complex underground soils has become a new hot spot. In this paper， we first summarize the basic architecture and research status of LoRaWAN-based wireless underground sensor networks and build a network simulator to implement two optimization algorithms of adaptive data rate （ADR） mechanism at the sensor node and the network server， respectively. Furthermore， we conduct a quantitative evaluation of network performance from the aspects of the underground deployment environment （soil’s moisture content and sensor’s burial depth） and physical layer parameters of LoRa， according to the performance indicators of the overall data extraction rate and network energy consumption. The results show that for the complex soil， the ADR mechanism has a good ability to adjust the physical layer parameters of nodes in LoRaWAN-based wireless underground sensor networks， which can provide a favorable means for the performance optimization of wireless underground sensor networks， and is expected to greatly reduce the network energy consumption.

Key words:wireless underground sensor networks;physical layer parameters;adaptive data rate (ADR) mechanism;underground space