On the Error Performance of LoRa-Enabled Aerial Networks Over Shadowed Rician Fading Channels

UAVs can be used as aerial relays to provide communication services in remote uncovered areas or dense environments with occasional high capacity demands. However, due the low power of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, UAV-based IoT applications, such precision agriculture and environment monitoring, may experience shadowing equipment failure, which degrades communications’ quality between devices their gateways. To tackle this issue, we consider long range (LoRa) technology. Specifically, investigate performance LoRA-enabled communications, where a LoRa gateway communicates distant device through assistance an amplify-and-forward (AF) relay. Under assumption shadowed Rician fading channels, characterize at first end-to-end link. Then, derive exact symbol error rate expression for underlying system model. Finally, numerical results are presented corroborate efficacy our derived expressions valuable insights into LoRa-enabled networks.