Investigating Theoretical Performance and Demodulation Techniques for LoRa

Abstract

LoRa is a popular low-rate, low-power wide area network technology providing long range wireless access over unlicensed sub-GHz frequency bands to the Internet of Things (IoT). It has been used in many applications ranging from smart building to smart agriculture. LoRa is a patented modulation, but preliminary reverse-engineering efforts documented parts of it. In this paper, we first present the LoRa modulation architecture. We then tackle with channel coding, whitening and interleaving with reverse-engineering in mind. Based on these early developments, we derive closed-form expressions of the different stages of the LoRa transceiver which, in turn, allows us to assess the performance of LoRa under known channels using simulations.