Modelo para comparação de cobertura de LoRa e NB-IoT no Brasil

Abstract

In this dissertation, a model to analyze the coverage provided by LoRa and NB-IoT technologies is presented. The proposed model considers real data from base stations (BS) of a given cellular operator, as well as information about local relief, provided by a digital elevation model (DEM). In addition, was adopted the Urban Macro and Rural Macro propagation models, which were proposed by 3GPP. The proposed model was tested in two regions in south Brazil, one mainly rural with few BS and another mostly urban, with a higher BS density. Our results indicate that for a mainly rural environment, when operating at a similar sub-GHz frequency band, NB-IoT outperforms LoRa due to the directivity associated with NB-IoT antennas, which provides better coverage for devices which are far from BS but near the main bearing. To the mainly urban region, the higher BS density of this region compensates the advantage of NB-IoT when providing coverage for distant areas, and LoRa presents a higher coverage rate. When the NB-IoT is considered to operate in the 1900 MHz band, due to the more severe path loss in this band, NB-IoT presents a lower coverage rate than LoRa, independent of the analyzed region.