Evaluating a mobility-aware ADR scheme in urban and suburban LoRaWAN environments

LoRaWAN provides extensive coverage, low energy consumption, and support for numerous connected devices. Aiming to reduce power demand while maximizing network throughput, LoRaWAN employs the ADR mechanism, which adjusts transmission parameters based on the link budget. However, standard ADR struggles in environments with mobile end devices and frequent signal variations, requiring alternative approaches for such scenarios. In this context, this paper proposes and evaluates Percentile-based ADR (P-ADR), a scheme that leverages statistical methods to estimate link conditions more accurately and swiftly adapt to dynamic environments. To assess its performance, P-ADR was compared against ADR+, M-ADR, and standard ADR in various urban and suburban scenarios, considering simulated networks with 1–2 gateways and 200–1000 static and mobile end devices. Results show that P-ADR significantly enhances performance in mobile environments, achieving up to a 22.6% improvement in the average PDR and up to 62.63 bits/J higher average energy efficiency compared to standard ADR. These findings suggest that P-ADR is a promising solution for IoT applications, particularly in scenarios with fluctuating channel conditions.