Once a Lorawan device starts sending data to the network server, a process called activation and accession procedures is required. The process of connecting nodes in the Lorawan Gateway to things in the network involves several steps.
All Lorawan gateways and sensor devices have a unique address code and this address code is called EUI (unique extended unique identifier). Applications in the Things network must be set up and registered with the Things network. For example, an application in the Things network may have multiple soil moisture sensors in a grain field that are connected to a Lorawan gateway via Lorawan communication.
When a device uses a low power network such as Lorawan to connect to the gateway, the gateway uses a high-bandwidth network such as WiFi, Ethernet or cellular for connecting to the Things network. When devices send their signal, the RF packet is picked up by the gateway, and if the range is strong enough, the device and the gateway connection forward the message to the cloud. When the gateway reaches the device to receive the device message, the message is sent to the Things Network.
IoT platforms and devices use gateways as a central hub to store perceived knowledge and connect it to external networks. A gateway is a springboard for devices in the network that can transfer their data to another gateway. Gateways are Lora concentrators that allow them to receive RF signals sent by Lorawan devices that are converted to signals from compatible servers such as Wi-Fi and send the data to the cloud.
This means that a large Lorraine system can run on more than one gateway. Instead of consuming more power, gateway administrators can use gateway devices for other purposes.
The use of Lorawan gateways as intermediaries between end nodes and network servers is by no means arbitrary. It is important to distinguish between Lorawan end nodes that communicate with the gateway and low-power Lorawan gateways that communicate with network servers using high-bandwidth communications protocols such as WiFi, Ethernet and cellular. Lorawan defines the communication protocols and system architecture of the network, the LORA architecture, which enables far-reaching communication connections.
The communication protocol and system architecture of the network jointly determine the battery life of the nodes, network capacity, service quality, security, and other applications that serve the network.
The Lorawan Network Server is the heart of the Lorawan network, enabling connectivity, management and monitoring of devices, gateways and end applications. Its main objective is to ensure the security, scalability and reliability of the data that is routed over the network. One area where Lorawan differs from other network specifications is the use of a STAR architecture where the central node and other nodes are connected to a gateway that acts as a transparent bridge to transmit messages between the terminal devices and the central server backend of the network.
Lorawan defines the communication protocols and system architecture of the network for the LORA Alliance at the physical level to enable remote communications. Lorawan is a cloud-based media access control protocol that acts as a network layer protocol to manage communications between LPWAN gateways and terminal devices and the alliance’s routing protocols. It is responsible for managing the frequency, data rate and performance of the devices.
It connects all devices to the Internet and manages communication between terminal devices and network gateways. The data is transmitted from the end nodes to the devices that receive multiple gateway data packets from the central network servers.
Lorawan is increasingly being used in industrial and smart cities as it is an affordable, long-range, low-power, bi-directional communication protocol that can run on small batteries for up to ten years. Lorawan is widely used in unlicensed ISM, industrial, scientific and medical radio band networks. It enables terminal devices such as sensors and actuators to connect to Lorawan’s network radio gateways using LORA RF modulation.
In this paper, we will investigate how to use LORA and Lorawan protocols to transfer ambient sensor data from an IoT platform to an IoT gateway. Using terminal screen commands on the Arduino, desktop applications and serial terminal, we can receive sensor data that the Arduino can collect from the IoT device.
Given Lorawan’s low energy consumption and remote transmission capacity for a newly developed protocol, it is an ideal long-range radio protocol for IoT platforms and devices. LPWA offers the opportunity to free industrial applications from the consumer-oriented cycle of public cellular networks with billions of IoT devices transmitting megabytes of data a month – or in most cases less – and provide stability to public and private networks designed for built-in machines. These networks extend battery life and range and provide sufficient connectivity for the vast majority of connected device use cases.
LORA sits on level 1 (physical level) of the seven-layer OSI model, which is an open system connection model for computer networks. Use of star and topography sensors for communication between the gateways in the LORA network.
The Lorawan Network Server (LNS) manages the entire network, controls network parameters, adapts the system to changing conditions, establishes secure 128-bit AES connections, transfers end-to-end data from the Lorawan terminal to the end-user application in the cloud and controls traffic between the terminal and the Lorawan Network Server. When multiple gateways receive the same LORA RF message from a single terminal device, the LNS performs data deduplication by deleting or copying. Based on the RSSI level of identical messages, the network server chooses the gateway that receives the message with the best RSSI and transmits the downlink message to the gateway and the gateway is closest to the terminal.
