DSME-LoRa : seamless long range communication between arbitrary nodes in the constrained IoT

Abstract

Long range radio communication is preferred in many IoT deployments as it avoids the complexity of multi-hop wireless networks. LoRa is a popular, energy-efficient wireless modulation but its networking substrate LoRaWAN introduces severe limitations to its users. In this paper, we present and thoroughly analyze dsme-LoRa, a system design of LoRa with IEEE 802.15.4 dsme as a mac layer. dsme-LoRa offers the advantage of seamless client-to-client communication beyond the pure gateway-centric transmission of LoRaWAN. We evaluate its feasibility via a full-stack implementation on the popular RIOT operating system, assess its steady-state packet flows in an analytical stochastic Markov model, and quantify its scalability in massive communication scenarios using large scale network simulations. Our findings indicate that dsme-LoRa is indeed a powerful approach that opens LoRa to standard network layers and outperforms LoRaWAN in many dimensions.