Understanding Long Range-Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (LR-FHSS) with Real-World Packet Traces

Long Range-Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (LR-FHSS) is a new physical layer option that has been recently added to the LoRa family with the promise of achieving much higher network capacity than the previous versions of LoRa. In this article, we present our evaluation of LR-FHSS based on real-world packet traces collected with an LR-FHSS device and a receiver we designed and implemented in software. We overcame challenges due to the lack of documentation of LR-FHSS, and our study is the first of its kind that processes signals transmitted by an actual LR-FHSS device with practical issues such as frequency error. Our results show that LR-FHSS meets its expectations in communication range and network capacity. We also propose customized methods for LR-FHSS that improve its performance significantly, allowing our receiver to achieve higher network capacity than those reported earlier.