Evaluating the Performance of LoRa Networks: A Study on Disaster Monitoring Scenarios

The development of technologies using the Internet of Things (IoT) concept evolves daily. These numerous technologies, such as LoRa (Long Range) transceivers, find applications in various domains, including monitoring natural disasters and those caused by human error. Security vulnerabilities arise concurrently with the advancement of these new technologies. Cyberattacks seeking to disrupt device availability, such as denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, can effectively exploit vulnerabilities in LoRa devices, hindering disaster monitoring efforts. Therefore, our goal is to assess the network parameters that impact the development of a disaster monitoring environment using LoRaWAN. Specifically, we aim to identify the parameters that could result in network availability issues, whether caused by malicious actors or configuration errors. Our results indicate that certain LoRa network parameters (collision checks, packet size, and the number of nodes) can significantly affect network performance, potentially rendering this technology unsuitable for building robust disaster monitoring systems.