Design and performance analysis of integrated sensing and communication scheme based on LoRa signals

Abstract

LoRa (Long Range) has garnered widespread adoption in Internet of Things (IoT) communications due to its extensive transmission range and robust resistance to interference. Furthermore, its capability to linearly discern deviations across both frequency and time domains renders it an ideal signal for sensing applications. Consequently, this article proposes an Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) scheme based on the LoRa signal. On the communication side, while the modulation and demodulation processes of the LoRa signal are currently kept confidential, this article has theoretically derived its principles and further implemented the communication functionality of LoRa through experimental simulations. On the sensing side, through theoretical derivation and experimental simulation, the influence of different modulation information on the peak amplitude and position of pulse compression was analyzed. Two signal processing schemes are proposed to overcome the impact of modulation information, thereby enabling the sensing function. The communication and sensing performance of the proposed ISAC scheme was evaluated. Experimental results demonstrated that, even in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) environments, the communication function maintained a low bit error rate (BER), while the sensing function achieved a high target detection rate, both of which exhibited excellent performance.