Large-Scale Continuous Monitoring of Greenhouse Gases with Adaptive LoRaWAN in CN470–510 MHz Band

Continuous and near-real-time monitoring of greenhouse gases (GHGs) is critical for achieving Net Zero emissions, ensuring early detection, compliance, accountability, and adaptive management. To this end, there is an increasing need to monitor GHGs at higher temporal resolutions, greater spatial resolutions, and larger coverage scales. However, spatial resolution and coverage remain significant challenges due to limited sensor network coverage and power sources for sensor nodes, even in urban areas. LoRaWAN, a cost-effective solution that provides long-range and high-penetration wireless connectivity with a low energy consumption, is an ideal choice for this application. Despite its promise, LoRaWAN faces several challenges, including a low data rate, low packet transmission rate, and low packet delivery success ratio, especially when the node density or environment variability is high. This paper presents a simulation-based analysis of a large-scale urban LoRaWAN sensor network operating in the CN470–510 MHz band, which is the only frequency band officially designated for low-power wide-area (LPWA) technologies such as LoRaWAN in China. This study investigates how the node density, sensor measurement update rate (i.e., update interval), and sensor measurement payload size affect two primary performance metrics: the sensor update delivery ratio (DR) and the radio frequency (RF) energy consumption (RFEC) per successful update. The performances of several enhanced adaptive data transmission algorithms in comparison to the conventional ADR+ algorithms are also analysed. The results indicate that both DR and RFEC are significantly influenced by the node density, sensor update rate, and payload size, with the effects being particularly significant under high-node-density and high-update-rate conditions. The analysis further reveals that the ADR-NODE-KAMA algorithm consistently achieves the best performance across most scenarios, providing up to a 2% improvement in DR and a reduction of 10–15 mJ in RFEC per successful sensor measurement update. Additionally, the sensor measurement payload size is shown to have a substantial impact on network performance, with each added sensor measurement contributing to a DR reduction of up to 2.24% and an increase in RFEC of approximately 80 mJ. LoRaWAN network operators can gain practical insights from these findings to optimize the performance and efficiency of large-scale GHG monitoring deployments.