A Novel Approach to Collision Avoidance in LoRa Networks

LoRa (Long-Range) is emerging as a promising platform in IoT technology because of its low power consumption and long-range coverage. We have been exploring the possibility of LoRa as a relay technology in linear and near linear networks. We have found that overlap of relay coverage has a negative effect on overall network performance because of signal interference caused by concurrent transmission. However, introducing a small offset delay at relay nodes can significantly improve the performance of the network overall. This article presents a novel approach to avoiding collision in LoRa-based linear networks. The proposed approach has been evaluated experimentally using LoRa transceivers that form a linear network. Our experiments show promising results with a significant increase in Packet Reception Rate (PRR).