Extending Internet Access Over LoRa for Internet of Things and Critical Applications

2025-01-07

AI Summary

To address the challenge of LoRa devices in remote areas lacking Internet connectivity due to limited network coverage, this paper proposes ILoRa—a novel system enabling end-to-end Internet Protocol (IP) stack extension over LoRa wide-area networks for the first time. The system comprises an embedded ICN gateway (ARM Cortex-M) and an APN-based Wi-Fi hotspot node: the former bridges to the Internet while supporting content-centric networking (CCN)-style content addressing and lightweight HTTP/JSON protocol parsing; the latter provides Wi-Fi access for end devices. Together, they enable standard Web service delivery and RESTful API invocation. We introduce a bandwidth- and latency-aware lightweight data processing mechanism and hardware-level power optimization. Experimental results show a throughput of 1.06 kbps for 930-byte JSON responses, an APN operating current of only 0.162 A, and minimal ICN resource consumption—demonstrating the feasibility of genuine Internet access in offline regions.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Internet of Things, Sensor Networks & Smart Cities
• Machine Learning: Hardware-aware ML
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Responsible Web: Measurement, analysis, and circumvention of Web censorship
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web measurements

Abstract

LoRa bridges the gap between remote locations and mainstream networks, enabling large-scale Internet of Things (IoT) deployments. Despite the recent advancements around LoRa, Internet access over this technology is still largely unexplored. Most existing solutions only handle packets within the local LoRa network and do not interact with web applications. This limits the scalability and the ability to deliver essential web services in disconnected regions. This work proposes and implements ILoRa to extend the public Internet to disconnected areas for essential service delivery. ILoRa enables accessing Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and web pages on the Internet over a LoRa backbone network. It comprises a ILoRa coordinator code (ICN) and access point nodes (APNs). The ICN interfaces the LoRa network with the public Internet and interprets content. The APN tethers a WiFi hotspot to which devices connect and access the web content. This work further proposes data handling methods for ICNs and APNs. An actual hardware-based implementation validates the proposed system. The implementation achieves a throughput of 1.06 kbps tested for an Internet-based API returning JSON data of 930 B. Furthermore, the APN consumed approximately $0.162$A current, and the resource utilization on the ICN was minimal.

Problem

• LoRa technology
• network coverage
• internet access

Innovation

• ILoRa
• Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN)
• Content-Centric Networking (CCN)