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 Deterministic Synchronous Multichannel Extension (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.

Evaluation of a Multi-Hop Wireless Internet-of-Things Network on Large Ships

“…Despite these efforts, establishing an efficient and reliable wireless network for collecting sensor data across multiple decks within a ship remains challenging. Therefore, this paper aims to verify the feasibility of using IEEE 802.15.4e DSME [21,[31][32][33][34][35] for this purpose. In this way, we contribute to the ongoing efforts for the improvement of wireless communication technologies in maritime environments.…”

“…In this context, we present a technology that uses the LoRa physical layer and the IEEE 802.15.4e [18] Distributed Synchronous Multi-channel Extension (DSME) as the MAC protocol to enable multi-hop-based [19,20] wireless communication over relatively long distances. A similar approach can be found in [21], where the authors present a method that combines DSME with LoRa to address the constraints faced by LoRaWAN [22] and improve performance in terms of packet reception ratio and transmission delays for networks with larger network size and higher traffic. Similarly, the network presented in this paper aims to overcome the challenges posed by the ship environment, including signal attenuation and interference.…”

Delay-tolerant ICN and its application to LoRa

“…This results in a slotframe structure of four superframes per multi-superframe, a beacon interval and multi-superframe duration of 30.72 s (applying the LoRa symbol time of 1.024 ms from Section 2.1), and provides 28 time slots • 16 frequency channels = 448 exclusive transmission cells. Other slotframe structures trade off subnet size, throughput, energy, and latency; the latter can increase to over 122 s in certain configurations [2].…”

“…We present the energy consumption per multi-superframe in Table 2, as well as the corresponding nodal lifetimes when operated from an off-the-shelf AA alkaline battery (2800 mAh). Our results are based on extensive measurements performed in [2], which quantify the energy consumption for passive and active periods of the DSME-LoRa superframe structure. Radio operations dominate consumption, i.e., wireless transmission and (idle) reception.…”

“…Contention-based [35,45] and scheduled MAC layers [24,26,58,61] for LoRa indicate performance improvements compared to LoRaWAN. Alamos et al [2,3] re-utilize IEEE 802.15.4e DSME (Deterministic and Synchronous Multi-Channel Extension) [25] to coordinate LoRa radios, with few modifications to the radio configuration. Fixed time-slotted DSME paired with low data rates increases latencies even further, though.…”