Network Slicing Optimization in Large Scale LoRa Wide Area Networks

The massive growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) poses important challenges on providing IoT devices with specific quality of service (QoS) requirements in terms of urgency and reliability over long distances and Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN). Due to the diversity of these services and the increasing complexity in large scale IoT networks, software defined networking (SDN) alongside network slicing are needed to increase flexibility in managing network slices and providing IoT networks with an optimized parameters configuration. Therefore, we propose in this paper a SDN-based network slicing architecture for LoRaWAN where network slices are virtually deployed and isolated over LoRa physical gateways. Moreover, we aim to improve large scale network configuration by proposing TOPG, a slice-based optimization that improves LoRa parameters configuration based on QoS thresholds of each slice. Simulation results performed over NS3, highlight the utility of the proposed optimization in improving the network performance of LoRa slices in terms of reliability and respecting QoS thresholds in IoT dense deployments.