SSK-ICS LoRa: A LoRa-Based Modulation Scheme With Constant Envelope and Enhanced Data Rate

Long-range (LoRa) modulation is an orthogonal modulation scheme that uses linearly-modulated up chirps to represent information bits. Its constant envelope and good bit-error-rate performance make it one of the key players in establishing low-power wide-area networks for the Internet of things applications. However, LoRa modulation has low data rates. In this letter, we propose a new constant-envelope modulation scheme, named slope-shift-keying and interleaved-chirp spreading (SSK-ICS) LoRa modulation, that can deliver higher data rates than the conventional LoRa modulation scheme. Succinctly, the proposed SSK-ICS-LoRa modulation uses up chirps, down chirps, interleaved up chirps and interleaved down chirps to expand the signal set and hence can carry more bits per transmission symbol. For the same spreading factor and bandwidth consumption, the proposed scheme is able to improve the data rate of the conventional LoRa scheme up to 28.6%. We also present the optimal maximum-likelihood detectors for both coherent and non-coherent demodulators for the proposed scheme. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms LoRa modulation in both data rate and bit-error rate.