Abstract
The distribution of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in remote areas and the need for network resilience in such deployments is increasingly important in smart spaces covering scenarios, such as agriculture, forest, coast preservation, and connectivity survival against disasters. Although Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies, like LoRa, support high connectivity ranges, communication paths can suffer from obstruction due to orography or buildings, and large areas are still difficult to cover with wired gateways, due to the lack of network or power infrastructure. The proposal presented herein proposes to mount LPWAN gateways in drones in order to generate airborne network segments providing enhanced connectivity to sensor nodes wherever needed. Our LoRa-drone gateways can be used either to collect data and then report them to the back-office directly, or store-carry-and-forward data until a proper communication link with the infrastructure network is available. The proposed architecture relies on Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) capabilities to host a virtualization platform on-board the drone, aiming at providing an intermediate processing layer that runs Virtualized Networking Functions (VNF). This way, both preprocessing or intelligent analytics can be locally performed, saving communications and memory resources. The contribution includes a system architecture that has been successfully validated through experimentation with a real test-bed and comprehensively evaluated through computer simulation. The results show significant communication improvements employing LoRa-drone gateways when compared to traditional fixed LoRa deployments in terms of link availability and covered areas, especially in vast monitored extensions, or at points with difficult access, such as rugged zones.
Highlights
The Internet of Things (IoT) is continuously evolving since its inception more than ten years ago.A new wave of technologies are revolutionizing this paradigm from different perspectives, enabling the development of novel services that are devoted to different fields of application, e.g., smart cities, smart agriculture, or Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), among many others [1,2].Attending to communication technologies used in this field, Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) is a recently-arrived solution to the IoT ecosystem, which is receiving great attention these days [3]
We repeated the experiments for the mobile architecture by flying the LoRa-drone gateway in two different points, increasing the elevation of the LoRa-drone gateway until the up-link Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) obtained with DR0 in each
Both experimental and simulation outcomes showcase the advantage of employing LoRa-drone gateways for vast monitored extensions, e.g., smart agriculture or farming, or at locations with difficult access, such as 450 rugged areas
Summary
The Internet of Things (IoT) is continuously evolving since its inception more than ten years ago. A common scenario using IoT technologies is agricultural or environmental monitoring on remote areas, which can involve difficult access conditions and scarce connectivity possibilities It is under these circumstances where the synergy between LPWAN and virtualization/MEC technologies, together with new ITS options, such as the use of drones, can better support the collection of sensor data by providing sporadic communication links. This work presents an integration of LPWAN and VNF capabilities in a mobile gateway to provide long-range connectivity to IoT devices placed in remote areas, avoiding the deployment a permanent network infrastructure. The mobile gateway is mounted on top a virtualization platform that is installed on-board an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), i.e., a drone It is provided with LoRaWAN communications and it is able to create a new network segment covering larger areas for collecting data from remote sensor devices.
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