LoRa-Based Sensor Node Energy Consumption with Data Compression

In this paper simple temporal compression algorithms' efficiency to reduce LoRa-based sensor node energy consumption has been evaluated and measured. It is known that radio transmission is the most energy consuming operation in a wireless sensor node. In this paper three lightweight compression algorithms are implemented in an embedded LoRa platform to compress sensor data in on-line mode and the overall energy consumption is measured. Energy consumption is compared to the situation without implementing any compression algorithm. The results show that a simple compression algorithm is an effective method to improve the battery powered sensor node lifetime. Despite the radio transmission's high energy consumption, the sleep current consumption is a significant factor for the device overall lifetime if the measurement interval is long.