Using your slice to run LoRa experiments

The Nitos outdoor LoRa testbed consists of two LoRa Gateways. One that is deployed on the rooftop of our premises connected with 5 LoRa edge devices that are scattered across the city of Volos. And another one that is deployed in the rural area of North Macedonia, connected with 4 LoRa edge devices that are scattered across the area. Details about the topology can be found in the next section. Each LoRa device is equipped with a LoRa transceiver and specifically the SX1272 chipset manufactured by Semtech, which is paired with a 4.5 dBi antenna. Each experiment is orchestrated from the server where you can specify the under test LoRa nodes and also the transmission power (TX Power) and the LoRa mode that you want to test. Then the gateway automatically starts the experiment and runs the experiments in random order.

1.Testbed topology

The two testbeds offers a wide range of wireless links that differ in terms of communication distance and elevation difference. In the table below you can see the communication distance between each node and the GW that they are connected and also the elevation from the sea level for each node.

Node ID Distance from GW Altitude
GW - City 0.00 km 18 m
53 2.66 km 9 m
54 3.09 km 12 m
55 1.86 km 9 m
56 3.33 km 12 m
57 1.44 km 18 m
Node ID Distance from GW Altitude
GW - Agro 0.00 km 58 m
1 2.14 km 46 m
3 5.33 km 52 m
4 9.50 km 43 m
5 8.58 km 52 m

2.Running LoRa City experiments for the server

You can run LoRa City experiments using our city-wide testbed while logged in to the NITOS server with your account.

Open a secure shell to the NITOS server using your slice name as username executing the following command:

$ ssh slice_name@nitlab.inf.uth.gr

Then you can start the desired experiment by executing a preconfigured Python script as the following example:

$ lora_exp_city.py -n 53,54 -tx M,H -m 1,2,3,4

Note

Using the -n/–node_ids flag you can specify the desired under test nodes. The node ids should be separated by a comma.

Note

Using the -tx/–tx_power flag you can specify the TX power that the end nodes will try to send their packets. The available parameters are M, H, and L which stand for +14, +7, and +0 dBm. The TX Power modes should be separated by a comma.

Note

Using the -m/–modes flag you can specify the LoRa mode(s) that the end nodes will try to send their packets. Each mode is a predefined set of Bandwidth (BW), Coding Rate (CR), and Spreading Factor (SF). In the table below you can see the details of each node.

Mode BW CR SF
1 125 4/5 12
2 250 4/5 12
3 125 4/5 10
4 500 4/5 12
5 250 4/5 10
6 500 4/5 11
7 250 4/5 9
8 500 4/5 9
9 500 4/5 8
10 500 4/5 7

2.Running LoRa Rural experiments for the server

You can run LoRa Rural experiments using our rural-wide testbed while logged in to the NITOS server with your account.

Open a secure shell to the NITOS server using your slice name as username executing the following command:

$ ssh slice_name@nitlab.inf.uth.gr

Then you can start the desired experiment by executing a preconfigured Python script as the following example:

$ lora_exp_agricultural.py -n 1,3 -tx M,H -m 1,2,3,4

Note

The parameters of this service are the same with the lora_exp_city service.