An Improved LoRaWAN Protocol Based on Adaptive
Duty Cycle
Tian Deng, Jiang Zhu , Zhiqiang Nie
School of Electronic Science and Engineering National University of Defense Technology
Changsha, China
Email:dengtian_nudt@163.com, jiangzhu@nudt.edu.cn, neizq_nudt@163.com
Abstract—In the low power wide area network, the
LoRaWAN protocol adopts ALOHA type to access channel
without duty cycle limited. The energy-efficient of the node
and the robustness for varying traffic load are not considered
in the situation which may lead to unfairness of node. To
balance the energy consumption and network performance, an
adaptive duty cycle medium access control (ADC-MAC)
protocol is proposed. The basic idea of the protocol is that each
sensor node maintains three indicators including the residual
energy, the node load and the network congestion rate. The
sensor node selects a different duty cycle to control the
minimum interval of the uplinks. The asynchronous scheme is
easier to implement as time synchronization is not necessary.
The results, acquired by OPNET, demonstrate that the
proposed ADC-MAC protocol have obvious advantages in
extending the battery lifetime and improving packet delivery
rate.
Keywords—duty cycle; energy efficiency; traffic load
adaptive; MAC protocol
I. INTRODUCTION
In the wireless sensor network (WSN), the energy
efficiency of the sensor node has been considered one of the
most important requirements in network design, especially
for battery-powered nodes deployed in harsh environment
[1]. The wireless transceiver module of the sensor node is the
largest energy consuming component. Using MAC protocol
to control the wireless transceiver on-off can effectively
reduce the node energy consumption and increase the
network life.
Many duty cycling mechanism in MAC protocols have
been proposed to decrease the idle listening [2]. At present,
according to whether need to synchronize, the duty cycling-
based MAC protocol is divided into two groups:
synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous duty cycle
protocols are represented by: S-MAC [3], T-MAC [4], EX-
MAC [5]. S-MAC protocol adopts fixed periodic listening
and sleeping mechanism, which affect the channel utilization.
T-MAC improves the channel utilization by adjusting the
length of the active period dynamically according to the
network traffic with total periods unchanged. The drawback
of the T-MAC is thatthe energy balance of nodes is not
considered; EX-MAC can change the duty cycle according
to the network load fluctuation. When the load on the sensor
changes, it immediately increases or decreases the duty cycle.
This may cause energy waste because of too frequent
switching status. Asynchronous duty cycle protocols are
978-1-5090-5363-6/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
represented by: Wise-MAC [6], PW-MAC [7]. Wise-MAC
combines the non-persistence CSMA protocol with the
synchronous preamble snooping mechanism to reduce the
time of idle listening, but each node needs to maintain a
sampling schedule of its directly adjacent nodes; The PW-
MAC protocol reduces the idle listening time by predicting
the wake time of the receiver, however it cannot adapt to the
change of the large traffic.
The Low power wide area network (LPWAN) has
excellent performance in WSNs, enabling large coverage and
low consumption [8]. The LoRaWAN [9] protocol in the
LPWAN is proposed by SEMTECH to support multi-
channel and spread spectrum communications, which can
expand network capacity obviously. In LoRaWAN, nodes
use ALOHA type to access channel without limit of the duty
cycle. The problem of this scheme is that it may well lead to
exhausting node energy earlier due to accessing channel
frequently. Introducing the duty cycle in the protocol is a
way to solve the problem, but the current duty cycle protocol
does not take into account the impact of the energy
consumption, the packet queuing delay, and the network
traffic, which may cause unfairness of some nodes.
In this paper, we propose the ADC-MAC protocol to
adjust the node duty cycle dynamically by introducing 3
indicators (e.g. node load, the node energy and the real-time
network parameter) into the duty cycle formula. And we use
OPNET to simulate the proposed protocol and analyze the
results.
II. LORAWAN PROTOCOL
LoRaWAN defined by LoRa alliance is a protocol based
on LoRa technology. The network topology is a “star of
stars” which means that terminals connect the gateways
directly via LoRa wireless links. All sensor nodes support bi-
directional communications, but mainly the uplink [10]. The
LoRaWAN specification 1.0.2 version divided the terminal
equipment into A / B / C types according to the actual
application. Class-A is the lowest power consumption
terminal. The terminal sends packets in ALOHA type based
on its own requirements. Each sensor node opens two short
downlink receive windows after uplink transmission. The
rest of the time is in a sleep state, see Fig. 1. In class-A,
downlink communications will have to wait until the next
scheduled uplink.
1122
 7HUPLQDO Data0 RX1 RX2 Data1 of the corresponding channel used by the upstream packet is
Delay 1 incremented by 1. Then the terminal will randomly select
ALOHA
Delay 2
additional channels for packet retransmission. After the
Fig. 1. Class A mode periodic T , the terminal obtains the busy rate of the channel
as:
The terminal can schedule the next uplink when it
receives the downstream information on any window, and Chanl _ Re _ Cnt >i @
V >i @ (3)
particularly when RX2 does not receive the ACK, it will try
to retransmit the same data. In either case, the terminal’s next
Chanl _ up _ Cnt >i @
time of accessing channel is determined by the terminal itself It is possible to calculate the busyness of the network by the
rather than other factors, which is not beneficial for the weighted average of the busy rates of the respective channels
existence of nodes with low energy.
in the period T :
This mechanism does not consider the node load in
N channel
different monitoring locations and the size of WSN, which 1
can easily lead to network congestion. To solve this problem, JT ¦ V T >i @ (4)
this paper proposes the ADC-MAC protocol to balance
N channel i 1

energy consumption and network performance. The ADC-
MAC protocol can asynchronously and dynamically adjust
the duty cycle through residual energy indicator, node load
indicator and indicator of network congestion rate.
III. ADC-MAC PROTOCOL
A. Protocol schemes
Each Lora sensor node in fixed period T needs to
maintain three indicators: residual energy, node load and
network congestion rate.
Definition 1. Residual energy indicator
Eremaining
D determined by the maximum duty cycle that can be set by the
Einitial (1)
Where Eremaining represents the residual energy of the sensor
node and Einitial is the initial energy.
Definition 2. Node load indicator
N buffer
E (2)
N max
Where N buffer represents the number of packets currently
buffered by the sensor node, and N max represents the total
number of packets generated by the sensor node.
Definition 3. Network congestion rate indicator
Lora gateways and Lora terminal support multi-channel
communication, and we express the channel as
In order to reflect the current network traffic load more
accurate, we get the network congestion rate indicator by
current and previous period of busy rate indicators:
2 1
J J T  J T 1 (5)
3 3
After the period T, the terminal calculates the maximum
duty cycle which can be used in the next period, and the
formula is as follows:
D E
\ duty _ cycle
2J K (6)
Where K is the system adjustment balance parameter,
system itself, with a minimum value of 1.
B. Protocol scheme
In the ADC-MAC protocol, each terminal adjusts the
duty cycle asynchronous and dynamically based on the three
indicators, and the algorithm flow chart is shown in Figure 2.
Step 1: After the terminal joins the network, it records the
initial packet buffer, initializes the duty cycle\ duty _ cycle , and
sets the timer 1 with the period T.
Step 2: If the terminal is in the first-period T, it uses the
initialization duty cycle to communicate, otherwise it uses
the calculated duty cycle. When the terminal transmits the
uplink frame, it records the transmission time Ttrans , and sets
1
i  1, , Nchannel  .In a fixed period T , Each terminal the timer 2 as Tother Ttrans (  1) according to
\ duty _ cycle
maintains an upstream counter Chanl _ up _ Cnt >i @ . the value of the current duty cycle. Then the terminal closes
the transceiver and remains the sleep state, except that
When the terminal sends a packet on a random channel, the opening the window 1 and window 2 to receive the
corresponding upstream counter of this channel is downstream frame at a fixed time.
incremented by one. At the same time, the terminal also
maintains a retransmission counter Chanl _ Re _ Cnt >i @ Step 3: The terminal waits for timer 2 to expire. When
timer 2 expires, if there is a frame ready to send to gateway,
to count the number of retransmissions. When the terminal the terminal returns to the step 2, otherwise it keeps the sleep
does not receive the ACK in the expected time, the counter state until the frame arrives

1123
 Step 4: The terminal waits for timer 1 to expire, and then 5%, and we choose K as 5 to limit the duty cycle in
it counts the three indicators of D , E , and J , and
 0,0.0625@ . In order to track the performance of the
D E
calculates the duty cycle \ duty _ cycle that the protocol, extraordinary, node 1 is configured as heavy load,
2J K sufficient energy; node 2 is configured as light load,
terminal can use in the next period. sufficient energy; node 3 is configured as low load, low
energy; node 4 is configured as normal load, sufficient
Step 5: The terminal sets the uplink counter energy; the others are randomly configured.
Chanl _ up _ Cnt >i @ , the channels busy rate V i and >@
B. Simulation analysis
the retransmission counter Chanl _ Re _ Cnt >i @ to zero,
Figure 3 shows the duty cycle used by the configured
but it needs to keep the network congestion rate indicator J nodes 1, 2, 3 and 4 during the simulation. It can be seen from
in order to weight the network traffic load in the next period the figure that all nodes set the initial duty cycle as 5% when
T . At the same time, the terminal sets the timer 1 and goes join the network in different time. Next nodes use different
to step 2. duty cycle based on their own indicators to communication
and change it dynamically for uplink transmission. The node
Node
Node 1 because of the heavy load and sufficient energy uses the
initialization
initialization larger duty cycle to increase the probability of access
channel. On the other hand, node 3 uses the smallest duty
Whether
Whether
W er cycle due to low energy. It is required to keep the sleep state
first
first to extend the node lifetime, and use the residual energy as
Y N
period
period TT
p much as possible to transmit the emergency information.
Use
Use
Use
Use initial
initial calculated
calculated 6
duty
duty cycle
cycle duty
duty cycle
cycle

5
Set
Set timer
timer 11
with
with period
period TT
Y
4
duty cycle(%)

Whether
Whether
W er
Y timer
timer 11 N
expired
expired
e d 3
Record
Record
Calculate
Calculate 33 transmission
transmission Whether
Whether
W er
indicators,
indicators, time,
time, set
set timer
timer 22
update
update duty
duty 2
duty
duty cycle
cycle expired
expired
e d
cycle
cycle timer
timer 22 Node 1
N
Node 2
1
Sleep
Sleep
Node 3
Node 4
0
Fig. 2. ADC-MAC duty cycle adjustment algorithm
0 200 400 600 800 1000
Simulation(s)

IV. PERFORMANCE SIMULATION Fig. 3. The duty cycle used by different nodes in the ADC-MAC protocol

A. Simulation Settings Figure 4 shows the energy consumption of the nodes 1, 2,

In this paper, we use OPNET to simulate the ADC-MAC
protocol. The network adopts as star topology, in which
LoRa terminals do not communicate with each other, but
communicate directly with LoRa gateways. Each terminal
has a different initial residual energy and the packets buffer
when start simulation. For the next time, the terminal
generates the different number of frames depending upon the
environment where it is located. The simulation adopts the
activation percentage control mechanism that our early paper
have discussed [11]. The initial duty cycle configuration is
3 and 4. The energy consumption parameters are given by
the data sheet of the LoRa chip SX-1276. We can see that the
node energy consumption is positively correlated with the
duty cycle used, indicating that adjusting the duty cycle can
effectively reduce the energy consumption. By comparing
the time spends on node 3 and node 4 with the same energy
cost, it can be seen that node 3 reduces the frequency of
sending the frame as much as possible to increase the battery
lifetime. In ADC-MAC protocol, each node is trying to avoid
premature "death", thus extends the life of the network.

1124
 network factually. In ADC-MAC, the node dynamically
70 adjusts the duty cycle according to the network busyness, to
Node 1 avoid the large number of nodes transmitting packets in the
60 Node 2 time that may interfere with each other.
Energy ConsumptionͧmJͨ

Node 3
50 Node 4 V. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, the ADC-MAC is based on LORAWAN
40 protocol, allowing each node to find the optimal duty cycle
according to its own situation (energy, load, channel busy
rate) to control the minimum interval of two uplink packets.
30 The proposed protocol not only improve the energy
efficiency by considering the average energy consumption,
20 but also take into account the varying traffic conditions to
avoid excessive congestion.
10
REFERENCES
0 [1]. N Sazak, I Erturk, E Koklukaya, et al. “Impact of Active Node
0 200 400 600 800 1000 Determination Approach for Energy Efficiency in WSN MAC
Simulation Timeͧsͨ Protocol Design,” International Congress on Ultra Modern
Telecommunications and Control Systems and Workshops(ICUMT
Fig. 4. Energy consumption of different nodes in the ADC-MAC protocol 2011), pp:1-5, October 2011.
[2]. Lim, Bum Jun, Jang Beakcheol, et al. “MCAS-MAC: A
Multichannel Asynchronous Scheduled MAC Protocol for Wireless
Sensor Network.” Computer Communications, vol.56, pp.98-107,
1 2015.
0.95 [3]. W Ye, J Heidemann, D Estrin, “An Energy Efficient MAC for
Wireless Sensor Networks,” in Proc.of IEEE INFOCOM,pp:1567-
0.9 1576,2002.
[4]. T Van Dam, K langendoen, “An Adaptive Energy-efficient MAC
Packet Delivery Rate

0.85 Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks,” International Conference

on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems,pp:171-180,2003.
0.8
[5]. B M Pang, H S Shi, Y X Li, “An Energy-Efficient MAC Protocol for
Wireless Sensor Network,” International Conference on Advanced
0.75
Computer Theory and Engineering, pp:V4-619-V4-623,2010.
0.7 [6]. Amre El-Hoiydi and J Dominique Decotignie. “WiseMAC: AnUltra
Low Power MAC Protocol for Multi-hop Wireless
0.65 SensorNetworks,” InProceedings of the First International Workshop
on Algorithmic Aspects of Wireless Sensor Networks
0.6 no duty cycle limit (ALGOSENSORS), pp:18–31, 2004.
[7]. Lei Tang, Yanjun Sun, Omer Gurewitz, and David B. Johnson.
fixed duty cycle :5%
0.55 “PW-MAC: An Energy-Efficient Predictive-Wakeup MAC Protocol
adaptive duty cycle for Wireless Sensor Networks,” In Proceedings of the 30th IEEE
0.5 International Conference on Computer Communications(INFOCOM
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
2011), pp:1305̢1313, April 2011.
Node Number [8]. F Delobel, N Rachkidy, “A Guitton. Analysis of the Delay of
Confirmed Downlink Frames in Class B of LoRaWAN,” the 85th
Fig. 5. Comparison of the package delivery rates for three scheme Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC) ,2017.
[9]. J Petajajarvi, K Mikhaylov, A Roivainen, et al. “On the coverage of
The performance of WSNs can be represented by the LPWANs: range evaluation and channel attenuation model for LoRa
packet delivery rate. Figure 5 is a comparison of packet technology ,” International Conference on ITS Telecommunications,
delivery rate between three schemes: adaptive duty cycle, pp:55-59, 2015.
fixed duty cycle and no duty cycle limit. The ADC-MAC [10]. D Y Kim, S Kim. LoRaWAN Technology for Internet of Things,
can get a higher packet delivery rate in WSNs, especially Journal of Platform Technology, 2015, 3.
when deployment of a large number of nodes. This is [11]. Tian Deng, Jiang Zhu, Zhiqiang Nie. “An Adaptive MAC Protocol
for SDCS System Based on LoRa Technology,” Advance in
because the adaptive duty cycle formula uses the indicator of Engineering Research, vol.118, pp:825-830, 2017.
network congestion rate, which can reflect current traffic of

1125