Abstract

The evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) has significantly accelerated the development of smart home ecosystems, where heterogeneous devices and services are seamlessly interconnected to enhance user comfort, energy efficiency, and security. A central challenge in realizing this vision lies in the selection of a communication protocol that ensures long-range connectivity, low power consumption, scalability, and robustness within residential environments that are typically characterized by multipath propagation, structural obstacles, and interference. LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network), a member of the Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) family, has emerged as a promising candidate to address these requirements. Its unique combination of Chirp Spread Spectrum modulation, adaptive data rate mechanisms, and sub-GHz operation enables cost-efficient deployment and long battery lifetimes, thereby positioning it as a key enabler of sustainable smart home applications. This review systematically explores the role of LoRaWAN in IoT-based smart home systems by consolidating findings from experimental testbeds, simulation-based studies, and pilot implementations reported in the scientific literature. The analysis encompasses multiple performance dimensions, including coverage range, packet delivery ratio, latency, and energy efficiency, while also highlighting security, interoperability, and privacy issues. Comparative assessments with other wireless technologies—such as Wi-Fi, ZigBee, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), NB-IoT, and Sigfox—are presented to contextualize LoRaWAN’s strengths and limitations in residential scenarios. Particular attention is devoted to how LoRaWAN complements or competes with short-range protocols in hybrid network architectures, especially in applications such as energy management, environmental monitoring, intrusion detection, and home automation. Furthermore, the abstracted findings emphasize the practical challenges of deploying LoRaWAN in smart homes, including scalability limits under dense node conditions, susceptibility to interference in unlicensed bands, and the necessity for enhanced end-to-end security mechanisms. The review also highlights ongoing research directions such as adaptive spreading factor allocation through machine learning, integration with edge computing for latency-sensitive services, and the utilization of energy harvesting techniques to extend device autonomy. Finally, the paper provides a forward-looking perspective on the convergence of LoRaWAN with 5G, cloud services, and blockchain-based security frameworks as part of the broader evolution towards intelligent, resilient, and sustainable smart home infrastructures. By synthesizing the current state-of-the-art and identifying critical open issues, this study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on wireless technologies for smart homes and offers valuable insights for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers engaged in shaping the future of IoT-enabled residential environments.

Key words: LoRaWAN; Smart Home; Internet of Things; Low Power Wide Area Networks; Wireless Communication; Edge Computing