LoRa Network Research Articles

Blending cybersecurity education with IoT devices: A u-Learning scenario for introducing the man-in-the-middle attack

ABSTRACT Nowadays, due to the increasing number of cyberattacks, cybersecurity education, training, and awareness are considered crucial for preparing current and future IT professionals. Thus, it is essential for educational institutions to foster well-designed learning strategies in the field of cybersecurity that will not only focus on theory-based learning interventions but also on encapsulating authentic learning practices. In this context, the paper at hand presents a ubiquitous scenario-based learning (SBL) intervention, blended with IoT devices for introducing the topic of the man-in-the-middle attack to 1st-grade students in vocational education. The learning scenario enables two-way plain text communication through a LoRa network. For securing the transmission and assure confidentiality, basic encryption techniques are enabled for the transmitted messages. Meanwhile, an eavesdropper, acting as the man-in-the-middle attacker, tries to intercept the communication, by applying different decryption techniques. For this purpose, a u-Learning app was developed. The app was evaluated by ninety 1st-grade students of an educational institute of vocational training, in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, knowledge acquisition, and learners’ satisfaction. Among others, the results show that the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposed learning process were 92.03%, and 89.63%, respectively. Finally, learners’ satisfaction was high, and their knowledge acquisition was improved.

Time-slotted LoRa MAC with variable payload support

LoRaWAN is an upcoming Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technology for Internet of Things implementations in various application domains. Despite its various advantages, LoRaWAN employs an Aloha-based MAC, which in terms of performance cannot guarantee high packet delivery ratio and low latency. To overcome this issue, we propose a time-slotted scheme, called TS-VP-LoRa, which supports multiple transmission times and packet sizes at the same time. In TS-VP-LoRa, scheduling is coordinated by the LoRa gateway, broadcasting beacon frames periodically for the synchronization of LoRa end-devices. A channel hopping mechanism is also proposed in order to minimize the occurrence of collisions and to evenly split the transmission load among all channels. TS-VP-LoRa is evaluated and compared to three other MAC-layer schemes in single gateway simulation scenarios with up to 500 nodes. The proposed scheme has proven to achieve low latency with high packet delivery ratios, significantly minimize collisions and maintain a relatively low energy consumption despite the scaling of the LoRa network.

LORA Based Wireless Weather Station

Abstract: In this Project we foster a model of "LoRa Based Wireless Weather Station". Where LoRa is a remote organization innovation supporting the web of things (IoT) framework. This innovation is an elective to other remote organization modules that have proactively been notable like GSM modules, Wi-Fi Modules and Bluetooth Modules. The use of the LoRa network expands the scope of remote cells that can arrive at distances of as much as 8 kilometres while as yet having low power usage. Climate boundaries that we are estimated in this task are Temperature, Pressure, Dew point, Altitude, Rainfall, Humidity and Light Intensity. In this model we use Arduino UNO, Barometric Sensor, Rain Sensor, Light Intensity Sensor and LoRa modules. What's more, Thingspeak Web application for sharing information to the clients. This framework can possibly be executed in metropolitan and provincial zones with various kinds of sensors related to it. This undertaking can be directed to shape a Low Power-Wide Area Network as a greater sensor organization.

An Analysis of Uplink Success Probability in Multi-cell LoRa Networks Under Different Channel Models

The development of the low power wide area network (LPWAN) for the internet of things (IoTs) is expected to grow widely, allowing remote monitoring of smart devices from a distance of up to several kilometers. This paper studies the performance and success probability of multi-cell LoRa networks. Using tools of stochastic geometry, the paper analyzes the important metric namely success probability in both Rayleigh and Rician channel models. The obtained analysis helps investigate and evaluate other quality criteria in the multi-cell LoRa network such as throughput, SNR and SIR requirements. Moreover, we provide numerical simulation results to corroborate the theoretical analysis and to verify how our analysis can characterize the given reliability target.

Analysis and Optimization for Large-Scale LoRa Networks: Throughput Fairness and Scalability

LoRa networks are pivotally enabling Long Range connectivity to low-cost and power-constrained user equipments (UEs) in a wide area, whereas a critical issue is to effectively allocate wireless resources to support potentially massive UEs while resolving the prominent near–far fairness issue, which is challenging due to the lack of tractable analytical model and the practical requirement for low-complexity and low-overhead design. Leveraging on stochastic geometry, especially the Poisson rain model, we derive (semi-) closed-form formulas for the aggregate interference distribution, packet success probability, and hence, system throughput in both single-cell and multicell setups with frequency reuse, by accounting for channel fading, random UE distribution, partial packet overlapping, and/or multi-gateway (GW) packet reception. The analytical formulas require only average channel statistics and spatial UE distribution, which enable tractable network performance evaluation and incubate our proposed iterative balancing (IB) method that quickly yields high-level policies of joint spreading factor (SF) allocation, power control, and duty-cycle adjustment for gauging the average max–min UE throughput or supported UE density with rate requirements. Numerical results validate the analytical formulas and the effectiveness of our proposed optimization scheme, which greatly alleviate the near–far fairness issue and reduces the spatial power consumption, while significantly improving the cell-edge throughput as well as the spatial (sum) throughput for the majority of UEs, by adapting to the UE/GW densities.

Analysis and performance optimization of LoRa network using the CE & SC hybrid approach

In this research, we assess the impact of collisions produced by simultaneous transmission using the same Spreading Factor (SF) and over the same channel in LoRa networks, demonstrating that such collisions significantly impair LoRa network performance. We quantify the network performance advantages by combining the primary characteristics of the Capture Effect (CE) and Signature Code (SC) approaches. The system is analyzed using a Markov chain model, which allows us to construct the mathematical formulation for the performance measures. Our numerical findings reveal that the proposed approach surpasses the standard LoRa in terms of network throughput and transmitted packet latency.

LoRaCog: A Protocol for Cognitive Radio-Based LoRa Network.

In this paper, we propose a new protocol called LoRaCog to introduce the concept of Cognitive Radio (CR) in the LoRa network. LoRaCog will enable access to a wider spectrum than that of LoRaWAN by using the unutilized spectrum and thus has better efficiency without impacting the end devices’ battery consumption. LoRa networks are managed by LoRaWAN protocol and operate on the unlicensed Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band. LoRaWAN is one of thriving protocols for Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWAN) implemented for the Internet of Things (IoT). With the growing demand for IoT, the unlicensed spectrum is expected to be congested, unlike the licensed spectrum, which is not fully utilized. This can be fairly balanced by applying CR to the LoRa network, where the End Devices (EDs) may change the operating channel opportunistically over the free/available licensed spectrum. Spectrum sensing, channel selection and channel availability relevance become essential features to be respected by the proposed protocol. The main objective of adding CR to LoRaWAN is reducing the congestion and maintaining LoRaWAN’s suitability for battery-operated devices. This is achieved by modifying LoRaWAN components such as the ED receive window RX2 rearrangement, spectrum sensing functionality by gateway (GW) for identifying unused channels, and reaching a decision on the unused channels by network server (NS). These changes will create LoRaCog meeting spectrum efficiency and maintain the same level of battery consumption as in LoRaWAN. Numerical simulations show a significant decrease in the rejected packet rate (more than 50%) with LoRaCog when more EDs use cognitive channels. As the results prove, LoRaWAN can reach above 50% rejected packets for the simulated environment versus 24% rejection for LoRaCog using only one additional channel (means total two channels). This means that the system can eliminate rejected packets almost completely when operating over the possible many channels. As well, these results show the flexibility in the system to utilize the available frequencies in an efficient and fair way. The results also reveal that a lower number of GWs is needed for LoRaCog from LoRaWAN to cover the same area.

On Construction of a Campus Outdoor Air and Water Quality Monitoring System Using LoRaWAN

This paper proposed implementing a water and air monitoring system using sensor development and a LoRa Network. To transmit data, a self-made PCB board integrates the terminal sensors with Renesas RX64M MCU and LoRa. There are 16 monitoring point stations for the media experiment. The sensors were used to measure the water and air parameters such as PM2.5, CO2, DO concentration, pH level, temperature, and humidity. In addition, the Grafana system was implemented to present the status and variation in the monitoring parameters in the environmental area. To evaluate the monitoring system, we also collected public information provided by the environmental protection department of the Taiwan government at the same monitoring point for comparison.

Leveraging data aggregation algorithm in LoRa networks

Leveraging data aggregation algorithm in LoRa networks

Design and Implementation of a Multi-Hop Real-Time LoRa Protocol for Dynamic LoRa Networks.

Recently, LoRa (Long Range) technology has been drawing attention in various applications due to its long communication range and high link reliability. However, in industrial environments, these advantages are often compromised by factors such as node mobility, signal attenuation due to various obstacles, and link instability due to external signal interference. In this paper, we propose a new multi-hop LoRa protocol that can provide high reliability for data transmission by overcoming those factors in dynamic LoRa networks. This study extends the previously proposed two-hop real-time LoRa (Two-Hop RT-LoRa) protocol to address technical aspects of dynamic multi-hop networks, such as automatic configuration of multi-hop LoRa networks, dynamic topology management, and updating of real-time slot schedules. It is shown by simulation that the proposed protocol achieves high reliability of over 97% for mobile nodes and generates low control overhead in topology management and schedule updates. The protocol was also evaluated in various campus deployment scenarios. According to experiments, it could achieve high packet delivery rates of over 97% and 95%, respectively, for 1-hop nodes and 2-hop nodes against node mobility.

Future Trends for Healthcare Monitoring System in Smart Cities Using LoRaWAN-Based WBAN

LoRa technology is extensively utilized in the Internet of Things world. It allows a transmission of a low volume of data through small wireless devices. The principle of LoRa networks is to transmit data over the air from sensors with low transmission range, for about tens of kilometers. Those sensors are not expected to be powered by electricity, and they are powered by batteries. We understand that visits to hospitals cannot be eliminated and that visits for full examinations were necessary, but technological progress nowadays could reduce the burden on hospitals thanks to remote controls and treatments in homes using those wireless sensors. So, the use of LoRaWAN protocol could greatly make diagnostic of patients more easily by transmitting data between doctors and patients in a real time manner. The aim of this work is to evaluate the performance of a network that contains numerous mobile sensors. Those sensors connect the doctors, nurse, and patient through a reliable and secure wireless network. Here, we want to evaluate various factors of LoRaWAN protocol that have a big effect on power consumption and data transmission delay.. Moreover, our LoRa-based networking implementation, based on software simulations, appears to be an option that allows for a robust, reliable, and lower overall cost IoT deployment and low bandwidth requirements. With LoRa, we can achieve similar or better link quality to IEEE 802.15.4, with higher data rate and lower costs.

Automated Agricultural Management Systems Using Smart Based Technology

This research focuses on the design and implementation of an Internet of Things (IoT) smart-based system for the agriculture industry, especially chilli plantations. Every year, chilli farmers experience huge losses due to pest infestation and a lack of technology to precisely manage their farms. To solve several problems, the IoT system was designed to continuously monitor pest detection status, temperature, humidity index, and soil moisture level simultaneously. Besides these, the IoT system is also designed for long-distance remote water, pesticide, and fertiliser pumps. An IoT platform was applied in this project to provide a monitoring dashboard and switches to empower several pumps with long-distance remotes using the LoRa communication systems in a wide coverage range of chilli farms. Three experiments were designed to determine the range of the LoRa network. All experiments and data collection were done on the campus of Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) and the Melaka area. All experiments were analysed based on the results collected, such as packet reception rate (PRR), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and received signal strength indicator (RSSI). Based on the experiment results and conclusion, the LoRa communication system is suitable for applying to chilli farms in order to monitor all the elements such as soil moisture and pest detection status. The experiment also concludes that this LoRa network can be worked effectively up to cover a range of 260m with the elevation of the gateway. Keywords—Management systems; Internet of Things; crop field; LoRa; agriculture industries; precision engineering

LoRa Based Wireless Weather Station

This research creates a weather station prototype using LoRa wireless technology. The internet of things (IoT) system is supported by LoRa, a wireless networking technology. This technology is an alternative to existing wireless communication modules such as GSM modules, Wi-Fi modules, and Bluetooth modules (BLE). The LoRa network is used to extend the range of wireless cells, allowing them to reach distances of up to 10 kilometers while consuming very little power. End devices can be connected to hundreds of nodes using a single LoRa network cell. Temperature, humidity, air pressure, rain detection, and wind speed are among the weather data that are monitored. The Atmega 328 microcontroller, DHT11 sensor, BH1750, rain sensor, BMP180 sensor, ESP32, LoRa module, solar panel, and web application are all included in the prototype. The number of end device nodes created in one cell is three. As a consequence, the system will be able to work correctly. With several types of sensors attached, this system has the potential to be applied in both urban and rural locations. Data collected from the sensors are then stored into the Firebase real-time database, a cloud-hosted database, and a mobile application is developed using MIT App Inventor to show the real-time weather conditions of a particular region in an android mobile phone. Keywords: Internet of Things (IoT), LoRa, MIT App Inventor, Sensors, Weather Parameters and, Wireless Station.

Optimizing the LoRa network performance for industrial scenario using a machine learning approach

In this article, the performance of the LoRa network for an industrial scenario has been optimized using a machine learning approach. The network performance is analyzed in terms of received power, outage probability, spectral efficiency and bit error rate (BER). A link-level performance of the LoRa network for an indoor industrial area considering both the non-obstructive and obstructive scenarios has been experimentally evaluated in terms of received signal strength indicator (RSSI) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Using the measured values of RSSI and SNR at the LoRa gateway, the received power is mathematically modelled which is further considered as an optimization problem. First, an artificial neural network (ANN) model was built and trained to predict the received power. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm was further used to find the optimal values of LoRa parameters corresponding to maximum received power. Simulation results reveal that the proposed optimization approach significantly improves the outage probability, spectral efficiency and BER of the LoRa network.

On the Spectral Efficiency of LoRa Networks: Performance Analysis, Trends and Optimal Points of Operation

In the present paper a closed-form framework is derived for the analysis and optimization of the coverage probability (Pcov) and of the area spectral efficiency (ASE) in long-range (LoRa) networks. The proposed framework exploits stochastic geometry tools to associate the Pcov and the ASE to the end device (ED) transmit power and to the ED density. The analysis reveals the trends of the Pcov and of the ASE curves, with respect to both of the two parameters, while the robustness of the framework holds even at the asymptotic cases. Building upon the derived framework, the analysis demonstrates that no joint global optimum exists that jointly maximizes the Pcov over both parameters, suggesting that the optimization of the Pcov must be performed separately, for the two key network parameters considered. As opposed to that, the analysis demonstrates that a set of global optima exists that jointly maximize the ASE over both parameters, and these global maxima are subsequently derived in closed form. Thus, the derived framework fully characterizes the performance of LoRa networks, while defining in closed form the optimal points of operation that can be proven of significant value, for the transceiver and network design, of practical LoRa networks.

Network-Coded Cooperative LoRa Network With D2D Communication

We evaluate the outage probability and the energy efficiency (EE) of a LoRa network when the end-devices (EDs) are capable of exchanging messages with a device-to-device (D2D) technology. Our proposal is to assess the performance of the network when operating under the concept of network-coded cooperation (NCC), where the EDs are capable of transmitting linear combinations of more than one frame (including frames of another ED), performed over a non-binary finite field. We consider both connection and collision probabilities when modelling the outage probability of an ED, as well as a realistic power consumption model to evaluate the EE. Our results indicate that the proposed scheme, which we refer to as NCC-LoRa, provides considerable gains in terms of both outage probability and EE when compared to a regular LoRa network, even when considering the additional consumption of D2D communication.

Improvement of Multichannel LoRa Networks Based on Distributed Joint Queueing

LoRa has gained popularity in realizing IoT applications by facilitating long-range communication with low power consumption. However, LoRa faces scalability issues due to its unsophisticated random access (RA) protocol, Aloha, which is vulnerable to collision and not scalable in dense network scenarios. In contrast, distributed queuing (DQ), a collisionfree contention-based RA protocol, is a promising candidate for replacing Aloha because of its near-optimal performance and independence from the traffic load and pattern. However, DQ is not compatible with LoRa, as it was initially designed to operate on CableTV that supports the full-duplex (FDX) bidirectional link. In FDX, the contention feedback overhead is negligible. Most wireless networks, such as LoRa, support the half-duplex, for which feedback overhead is considerable. Furthermore, a reduction in efficiency is aggravated under a multi-channel environment because of an unbalanced traffic load. This study proposes a joint distributed queueing protocol to consider contention for LoRa that minimizes control overhead and achieves inter-channel load balancing. Our analysis shows that the proposed protocol reduces the control overhead by up to 70% compared to DQ. The protocol performance demonstrates near-optimum throughput and access delay, irrespective of the number of arrivals.

LoRa-LiSK: A Lightweight Shared Secret Key Generation Scheme for LoRa Networks

Physical-layer security (PLS) schemes use the randomness of the channel parameters, namely, channel state information (CSI) and received signal strength indicator (RSSI) to generate the secret keys. There has been limited work in PLS schemes in long-range (LoRa) wide-area networks (LoRaWANs) which hinder their widespread application. Limitations observed in existing studies include the requirement of high correlation between channel parameter measurements for secret key generation in the proposed schemes and the evaluation of the schemes has only been done in either fully indoor or outdoor environments. The real-world wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and LoRa use cases might not meet both requirements thus making the current PLS schemes inappropriate for these systems. By considering the limitations found in existing PLS schemes, this article proposes LoRA-LiSK, a practical and efficient shared secret key generation scheme for LoRa networks. Our proposed LoRa-LiSK scheme consists of several preprocessing techniques (timestamp matching, two sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests, and a Savitzky–Golay filter), multilevel quantization, information reconciliation using Bose–Chaudhuri–Hocquenghem (BCH) codes, and finally, privacy amplification using secure hash algorithm SHA-2. The LoRa-LiSK scheme is extensively evaluated on real WSN/IoT devices in practical application scenarios: 1) indoor to outdoor and 2) LoRa static and mobile outdoor links. It outperforms existing schemes by generating keys with channel parameter measurements of low correlation values (0.2–0.6), while still essentially achieving high key generation rates, and low key disagreement rates (10%–20%). The scheme updates a key in approximately 1 h using an application profile with high transmission rate compared to 3 h reported by existing works while still respecting the duty cycle regulation. It also incurs less communication overhead compared to the existing works.

A Multiple End-Devices Authentication Scheme for LoRaWAN

With the advancement of the Internet of Things, the LoRa Alliance produced the Long-Range Wide-Area Network (LoRaWAN) Specification, allowing end-devices to transit through a gateway and join the LoRa network after completing a join procedure. When an end-device joins the LoRaWAN network, it must send a join request message to the network server and wait for the network server to verify such request under the current LoRaWAN join protocol. However, as the number of end-devices grows exponentially, network server verification messages will grow linearly with the number of end-devices. This paper proposes an authentication system for multiple end-devices that complies with the LoRa Alliance’s specifications and decreases the joining latency imposed by the network server verifying messages. The proposed authentication system is formally secure against the server and end-device impersonation. In addition, we assess the authentication overhead and compare it to the standard approach.

Performance Analysis and Resource Allocation for a Relaying LoRa System Considering Random Nodal Distances

In conventional star-topology LoRa networks, the gateways are expected to collect the data from all the nodes nearby. However, a major challenge for the conventional LoRa system is the performance degradation due to the long-range communication over fading channels. To resolve the challenging issue, this paper investigates a two-hop amplify-and-forward relaying LoRa network in a two-dimension plane, where random nodal distances are considered. Moreover, a relay-selection mechanism is developed for the proposed system. Based on the best relay-selection protocol, the analytical bit-error-rate (BER) and asymptotic BER expressions, achievable diversity order, coverage probability, and throughput of the proposed system are derived over the Nakagami-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$m$ </tex-math></inline-formula> fading channel. Furthermore, to maximize the throughput of the proposed system, a two-dimensional resource allocation optimization problem (i.e., the spread factor selection and power allocation optimization) is formulated and investigated. The proposed optimal spread factor selection and power allocation scheme is verified to outperform the two baseline schemes. Simulation and numerical results show that although the proposed system reduces the throughput compared to the conventional LoRa system, it significantly improves the BER and coverage probability. Hence, the proposed system can be considered as a promising technique for low-power, long-range and highly reliable Internet-of-Things applications.