# A Survey on LoRaWAN Architecture, Protocol and Technologies
## 4 Future Work & Research Directions  
In previous sections, we have introduced the LoRaWAN and related work is done until today. It is obvious that the most majority of the researches are performed on coverage test and how far a LoRaWAN frame can be transmitted. We can conclude that modulation is proven and other research paths should be followed.  
LPWANs are fairly new and there are challenging issues awaiting to be addressed. We have covered the LoRaWAN protocol in previous sections. The protocol is driven from Aloha which is fairly simple to implement however, it has some drawbacks when using an increasing number of network elements are involved. When the size of the network increases, packet transmission attempts will increase and successful packet delivery ratios will dramatically decrease. This would be a vital problem when real-time or critical services rely on LoRaWAN infrastructures. The problem of, efficient successfully packet delivery on unreliable medium should be investigated.  
Another related research direction would be controlling the ADR with application-specific domains. The protocol itself doesn't provide an algorithm for ADR however, it gives necessary MAC commands to control it. Applications having frequent data transmission may be configured to with (depending on the distance) lower SFs and higher data rates to utilize the channel more effectively. Also, controlling the ADR will affect energy consumption and the costs which could lead the problem to be more complicated.  
With LoRaWAN v1.1 network servers are able to support roaming and network backends should be coordinated through a standard. LoRaWAN Backend Interfaces v1.0 introduces roaming related management problems (OTA) however, higher network level management issues are not addressed such as; monitoring, configurations, and management of the GW and the nodes. Detecting multifunctional devices on the network, and maintaining all devices are important in enterprise level solutions.  
LoRaWAN networks best fit for outdoor IoT solutions such as smart city, airport, and farming... etc. Besides outdoor usage, there is a gap in indoor deployments and solutions. Signal propagations and other network problems will raise for indoor application scenarios for different home users.  
We are in an Information Age and the way information is driven has dramatically changed towards humans to machines, from centralized to decentralized from closed to open. LoRaWAN is an open platform that enables m2m to connectivity however, it is not a fully decentralized network. Daily usage of Blockchain technology is getting hits and studies aiming LPWAN and Blockchain integration would be a game changer.  
It is also possible to benefit from transmission ranges of modulation on emergency conditions such as post-disaster communications and surveillance systems.  
As explained in previous sections, LoRaWAN has key features such as; GPS-free Positioning, Long Range data transmission, ADR, different classes for different use cases, low energy consumption. These functionalities enhance the protocol and provide flexibility however, profile or policy-based approaches are needed in the long term. A profile based configuration could help application developers quick start and network operators could utilize the network and medium more effectively.