LoRaute: Routing Messages in Backhaul LoRa Networks for Underserved Regions

Abstract

LoRa technology endows unprecedented ability to connect isolated geographical landscapes and build community networks that serve specific purposes. As the network grows, coherent routing of messages becomes imperative to meet the network’s objectives and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. However, despite the recent rise in research and development centered around LoRa networks, not much research addresses the routing mechanisms in LoRa networks. Moreover, the LoRa routing mechanisms must run on low-power and resource-constrained devices, as these networks primarily target far-off locations or volatile environments such as volcanoes. Hence, this work proposes routing mechanisms (LoRaute) for LoRa networks that help route messages considering the messages’ QoS requirements. Also, a multi-purpose network hardware is proposed, which serves as a LoRa network base station or a WiFi to LoRa bridge for TCP/IP communication. Additionally, this work furnishes and assesses the implementation of the LoRa network and the routing mechanisms in a real environment. The implementation results indicate a seamless and rapid setup of multi-hop LoRa networks. Moreover, the implementation achieves a routing table record size of 9B, 24.45ms routing latency, and 171mA peak current consumption by the proposed LoRa node. Finally, the proposed system serves as a backhaul network for essential long-range communications, as demonstrated by the experimental setup.