The Firefly Unit: A MANET based communication system using Zigbee and LoRaWAN protocols for IoT applications in Remote Locations

Abstract

We are massively reliant on communication systems such as radios, phones, etc., which fails to provide a reliant communication system for people to have a long-distance transmission of information from remote locations of difficult terrains and hilly regions. This paper addresses the existing and paralyzed long-distance communication system for the transmission of data for remote locations and proposes a communication system, based on the LoRaWAN and Zigbee protocols designed, developed, and tested on wireless sensor networks (WSN). The WSN records various data from the sensor cluster. This data is then processed by the microcontroller - Atmega328p and pushed to the Xbee module which is operated using the Zigbee protocol. In the proposed model, the sensor cluster, the microcontroller, and the Xbee module are fabricated together as a single node. This system is designed to handle single as well as multiple such nodes, and architect them in a peer-to-peer and self-forming network i.e. a Mobile ad-Hoc Network. For routing the data generated from the sensor cluster in the most energy-efficient way, we will be clustering our nodes using the Routing and Clustering Algorithm (RCA). Clustering is a broadly accepted and trusted way for arranging nodes in WSN to address data congestion and energy efficiency issues. The efficient architecture is very advantageous to communication engineers for smart Internet of things applications. Seizing the compatibility of LoRaWAN and ZigBee wireless technologies, this robust communication system is proposed in this paper and examined with an IoT based system.