LORA-to-LEO Satellite—A Review with Performance Analysis

The Satellite Internet of Things (IoT) sector is undergoing rapid transformation, driven by breakthroughs in satellite communications and the pressing need for seamless global coverage—especially in remote and poorly connected regions. In locations where terrestrial infrastructure is limited or non-existent, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites are proving to be a game-changing solution, delivering low-latency and high-throughput links well-suited for IoT deployments. While North America currently dominates the market in terms of revenue, the Asia-Pacific region is projected to lead in growth rate. Nevertheless, the development of satellite IoT networks still faces hurdles, including spectrum regulation and international policy alignment. In this evolving landscape, the LoRa and LoRaWAN protocols have been enhanced to support direct communication with LEO satellites, typically operating at altitudes between 500 km and 2000 km. This paper offers a comprehensive review of current research on LoRa/LoRaWAN technologies integrated with LEO satellite systems, also providing a performance assessment of this combined architecture in terms of theoretical achievable bitrate, Bit Error Rate (BER), and path loss. The results highlight the main performance trends of LoRa LR-FHSS in direct-to-LEO links. Path loss increases sharply with distance, reaching approximately 150 dB at 500 km and 165–170 dB at 2000 km, significantly reducing achievable data rates. At 500 km, bitrates range from approximately 7–8 kbps for SF7 to below 2 kbps for SF12. BER follows a similar trend: below 200 km, values remain low (10−4–10−3) for all spreading factors. At 1000 km, BER rises to approximately 3.9×10−3 for SF7 and 1.5×10−3 for SF12. At 2000 km, BER reaches approximately 4.7×10−2 for SF7 but stays below 2×10−2 for SF12, showing a 2–3× improvement with higher spreading factors. Overall, many links exhibit path loss above 160 dB and BER in the 10−3–10−2 range at long distances. These results underscore the importance of adaptive spreading factor selection and LR-FHSS gain for reliable long-range satellite IoT connectivity, highlighting the trade-off between robustness and spectral efficiency.