LoRa Architecture for V2X Communication: An Experimental Evaluation with Vehicles on the Move

• Main Authors: Khandaker Foysal Haque, Ahmed Abdelgawad, Venkata Prasanth Yanambaka, Kumar Yelamarthi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-12-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: vehicle to everything (V2X); vehicle to vehicle (V2V); vehicle to infrastructure (V2I); LoRa; reliable V2X communication
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/23/6876

The industrial development of the last few decades has prompted an increase in the number of vehicles by multiple folds. With the increased number of vehicles on the road, safety has become one of the primary concerns. Inter vehicular communication, specially Vehicle to Everything (V2X) communication can address these pressing issues including autonomous traffic systems and autonomous driving. The reliability and effectiveness of V2X communication greatly depends on communication architecture and the associated wireless technology. Addressing this challenge, a device-to-device (D2D)-based reliable, robust, and energy-efficient V2X communication architecture is proposed with LoRa wireless technology. The proposed system takes a D2D communication approach to reduce the latency by offering direct vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication, rather than routing the data via the LoRa WAN server. Additionally, the proposed architecture offers modularity and compact design, making it ideal for legacy systems without requiring any additional hardware. Testing and analysis suggest the proposed system can communicate reliably with roadside infrastructures and other vehicles at speeds ranging from 15–50 km per hour (kmph). The data packet consists of 12 bytes of metadata and 28 bytes of payload. At 15 kmph, a vehicle sends one data packet every 25.9 m, and at 50 kmph, it sends the same data packet every 53.34 m with reliable transitions.