Enabling LoRa energy awareness: A Multihop One-Hop Routing Protocol for Prolonging Network Lifetime

IoT applications often rely on battery-powered nodes that may be challenging to recharge, making energy efficiency a crucial concern. In this context, routing protocols play a vital role as they dictate the paths data packets take between nodes, directly influencing the energy consumption of IoT networks. Energy-aware routing protocols have been proposed to address this issue, with the aim of optimizing energy consumption by selecting paths that minimize the energy required for data transmission and reception. These protocols employ various strategies, such as distance-based, traffic-based, and hybrid schemes, to achieve energy efficiency in IoT networks. LoRaWAnprotocol has been adopted for various IoT applications with requirements in low-power and extended coverage. Over the recent years attempts have been made to replace the typical star topology employed by LoRa with multihop solutions, in an effort to further increase its capabilities. In this paper, we present a multihop algorithm that is based on an energy-balanced routing scheme adopted by LoRa nodes to increase energy efficiency and network lifetime. Multiple one-hop routes are configured for critical nodes and a different route is selected in each transmission. Additionally, critical nodes adjust their Spreading Factor and Transmission Power according to the distance of intermediate nodes. Simulation testing results verify the improved performance of our algorithm over the direct link approach.