Improving IoT support in Smart Cities through LoRa technology upgrading

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) has advanced Smart City services through extensive device connectivity. LoRa, a leading LPWAN technology, provides long-range communication with low power consumption but suffers from scalability, latency, and energy-efficiency challenges in dense urban settings. To address these issues, this study introduces an integrated optimization framework that combines adaptive data rate (ADR) control, multi-channel communication, and dynamic resource allocation. The framework aims to reduce transmission delays, minimize packet collisions, and improve overall energy performance. It leverages multi-channel communication to distribute traffic, resource scheduling to prioritize critical data, and ADR to adjust transmission power and data rate based on real-time network conditions. Large-scale simulations conducted in OMNET++ demonstrate significant improvements over standard LoRa configurations, including baseline, ADR-only, and multi-channel setups. In a representative urban environment, the proposed framework achieved packet delivery rates of approximately 92.3% at 300 nodes and 85.7% at 900 nodes, while maintaining low latency and energy consumption. Overall, the integrated approach delivers robust performance across varying node densities, making it a strong candidate for future large-scale IoT deployments in Smart City architectures.