Automatic spread factor and position definition for UAV gateway through computational intelligence approach to maximize <i>signal-to-noise ratio</i> in wooded environments

The emergence of long-range (LoRa) technology, together with the expansion of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) use in civil applications have brought significant advances to the Internet of Things (IoT) field. In this way, these technologies are used together in different scenarios, especially when it is necessary to have connectivity in remote and difficult-to-access locations, providing coverage and monitoring of greater areas. In this sense, this article seeks to determine the best positioning for the LoRa gateway coupled to the drone and the optimal spreading factor (SF) for signal transmission in a LoRa network, aiming to improve the connected devices <i>signal-to-noise ratio</i> (SNR), considering a suburban and densely wooded environment. Then, multi-layer perceptron (MLP) networks and generalized regression neural networks (GRNN) were trained to predict the signal behavior and determine the best network to represent this behavior. The MLP network presented the lowest RMSE, 2.41 dB, and was selected for use jointly with the bioinspired Grey-Wolf optimizer (GWO). The optimizer proved its effectiviness being able to adjust the number of UAVs used to obtain 100% coverage and determine the best SF used by the endnodes, guaranteeing a higher transmission rate and lower energy consumption.