Performance evaluation of Aloha and CSMA for LoRaWAN Network

Due to characteristics, like low power usages, long range and low cost, Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) is the finest choice for many Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) reconcile with simple MAC layer protocol called Aloha which helps to reduces the battery lifetime but all the transmissions in the network will occur at same time which increases collisions between the packets and decreases network performance heavily. Because of this we evaluated the performance of LoRaWAN with Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) for coalition avoidance. We have simulated LoRaWAN-Aloha and LoRaWAN-CSMA/CA in multiple networking conditions by changing network load, spreading factors, distance between gateway and sensors to investigate the network performance and energy consumption. The simulation result let us evaluate and compare between CSMA and Aloha on collision ratio, network success probability and energy consumption per node. The performance evaluation shows, the LoRaWAN-CSMA/CA could be better choice, compare to LoRaWAN-Aloha, for large IoT network with strong scalability requirement. Whereas LoRaWANAloha would be a better choice for a small scale and static IoT network.