ns-3 Simulation of an IoBT Network for IFF Reliability Study Under Terrain- Heterogeneous LoRaWAN Propagation

This paper describes an ns-3 simulation of an Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) network built to study Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) reliability under terrain-heterogeneous LoRaWAN propagation. The simulation covers a 10 × 10 km battlespace with 200 Class A LoRaWAN end-devices, gateways on hexagonal grids at five inter-gateway separations (200–7000 m), and nine terrain classes parameterised by path-loss exponents from published LoRa measurements (n = 1.8 to 4.4). A custom event-logging module records every transmission and gateway reception at millisecond resolution, producing 3.26 × 10⁵ communication events across 45 independent runs. Key results: IFF verification collapses sharply in Forest, Hilly, and High Altitude terrain beyond 500 m gateway spacing; and ADR masking causes single-gateway PDR to remain acceptable at separations where dual-gateway verification has already failed.