# A Comprehensive Study of the Use of LoRa in the Development of Smart Cities
## 5 Discussion
### Impact of LoRa Research Proposals in the Smart City Initiative
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c} \hline \hline  & **Trengths** & **Weakness** \\ \hline \(\bullet\) & Possibility of deploying private networks \\ \(\bullet\) & Low cost of hardware (less than 5100) \\ \(\bullet\) & Low power consumption in non-transmission mode (less than 1 A) \\ \(\bullet\) & Long battery lifetime (more than 10 years). \\ \(\bullet\) & Large coverage (up to 15 km) \\ \(\bullet\) & More messages may draw other LFWAN technologies \\ \(\bullet\) & Robust to Doppler Effect and multipath fading, due to CSS modulation \\ \(\bullet\) & LoRa uses adaptive data (ADR) \\ \(\bullet\) & LoRa’s sensitivity is on average 127 dBm \\ \(\bullet\) & Easy deployment and configuration. Many examples of configuration are \\ \(\bullet\) & available in Internet websites and scientific databases. \\ \(\bullet\) & End-to-end security is available in LoRa.  
\begin{tabular}{l c c} \hline \hline  & **Threats** \\ \hline \(\bullet\) & Deployment of LoRa networks in many cities around the world. \\ \(\bullet\) & New cities need a sensorization process. \\ \(\bullet\) & Big IoT enterprise are developing or supporting LoRa products \\ \(\bullet\) & \(\bullet\) & Security issues due to lack of periodic updates of IoT devices \\ (e.g., Cisco, IBM, Intel). \\ \(\bullet\) & The need for smart city solutions using IoT is growing, especially in the \\ \(\bullet\) & healthcare, energy, industry, and transportation areas. \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 15: SWOT analysis of LoRa in smart city applications. to confirm is the independency of the application of the smart city from the grade of integration (loose, tight, data). According to the results of the independency test, the alternative hypothesis was selected. Thus, certain subcategories have a greater tendency to propose solutions related to smart city criteria and indicators, like the subcategory of energy. Other subcategories have a greater tendency to take advantage of the data generated to improve decision-making processes, like the subcategory of agriculture. These results led us to consider that, although the LoRa-IoT proposals focused on the environment subcategory developed between 2015 and 2019, the proposals were developed to cover a specific need in the field and were not used to enhance the strategies for building a smart city. Rethinking those approaches could contribute significantly, considering that the environment is one of the relevant axes within circular economy proposals. A second part of this result is that it could strengthen the use of data for decision-making processes in the subcategories of the smart city. This can generate new business models and research projects, especially in relation to the integration of IoT with data science. Based on the results obtained from a qualitative analysis of the three hypotheses, it was possible to identify the relevant aspects of the proposals of tight integration and data that contribute to the development of a circular economy for the construction of a sustainable and smart city. To identify the relevant aspects, we used the concepts present in the works \"Circular economy strategies in eight historic port cities: criteria and indicators towards an evaluation framework for circular cities\" [2], and \"The socio-economic integration of the circular economy are considered: An Integrative Framework\" [97]. Table 18 presents the four relevant aspects obtained by this quality analysis, i.e., the social, economic, organizational, and material reuse aspects and the relation with the 96 studies considered in the inclusion phase of the PRISMA methodology of this study. On the basis of the results obtained from (1) the analysis of the three hypotheses, (2) the contribution of the proposals to the four aspects of a circular economy and to the aspects identified in the subsections social, research, and industrial contributions, and (3) the SWOT analysis, we present the following possible academic and industrial impacts and future trends related to IoT-LoRa to build a smart city based on circular economy.