Designing and Implementing a Microstrip Antenna on LoRa Frequency for Smart Meter Communication

Abstract

The long-range wide area network (LoRaWAN) has been widely used for sensor networks, including smart meter (SM). The SM can report power consumption to the control center automatically via a communication link. An antenna is a key component to indicate an effective communication system. The microstrip antenna (MSA) works based on the unidirectional radiation pattern. The advantages of MSA are its light weight, small size, and ability to be easily etched on a print circuit board. These advantages are needed for the SM communication because SMs are installed on electric poles that have limited space. In this pa- per, we implement the MSA for SM communication on LoRaWAN technology that operates at a frequency of 920–925 MHz in Thailand. The proposed MSA is used to design a new path loss model for LoRaWAN in urban areas. Results show that our MSA is effectively close to commercial antennas in a 2.2 km range, with the packet delivery ratio reaching 52.93%. We analyze the results by using a mathematical equation that includes the free space model, the Okumura–Hata model, root mean squared error, and coefficient of determination.