Voice Over LoRa™

In this paper, we describe our work on transmitting voice over LoRa. Our goal is to develop a LoRa / Satellite voice gateway for emergency services. This paper describes the LoRa component of that gateway. Our approach involves developing a prototype that utilizes our novel voice streaming protocol and assessing how different parameters affect voice transmission over the LoRa physical layer. Our experiments confirm that low-bit-rate voice can be transmitted over LoRa at distances exceeding one kilometer with acceptable levels of packet loss and bit error rates. Voice quality is positively correlated with larger packet sizes, albeit with increased packet loss. Smaller packets introduce some latency but reduce packet loss, while larger packets, especially those exceeding 124 bytes, pose a risk of packet fragmentation and a higher frequency of lost packets and bit errors.