Beacon-Based Uplink Transmission for LoRaWAN Direct to LEO Satellite Internet of Things

Abstract

Direct-to-satellite IoT (DtS-IoT) communication structure is a promising solution to provide connectivity and extend the coverage of traditional low-power and long-range technologies, especially for isolated and remote areas where deploying traditional infrastructure is impracticable. Despite their bounded visibility, the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites complement the terrestrial networks, offering broader gateway coverage and terrestrial network traffic offloading. However, the dynamics of LEO and the nature of such integration come with several challenges affecting the efficacy of the network. Therefore, this paper proposes Beacon-based Uplink LoRaWAN (BU-LoRaWAN) to enhance satellite-terrestrial communication efficiency. The proposed scheme exploits the LoRaWAN class B synchronization mechanism to provide efficient uplink transmission from LoRaWAN devices placed on the ground to satellite gateways. BULoRaWAN proposes an uplink transmission slot approach to synchronize ground devices’ uplink traffic with LEO-based orbiting gateways. It also uses a queue data structure to buffer end devices’ ready-to-send packets until the appropriate moment. BU-LoRaWAN avoids possible transmission collision by optimizing a random transmission slot for an end device within the beacon window. The proposed system is implemented and evaluated using OMNeT++ network simulator and FLoRaSat framework. The result demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed system. BU-LoRaWAN achieves better performance compared to the standard LoRaWAN, which manages to deliver almost double the traffic delivered by the standard one.