A Viable LoRa Framework for Smart Cities

This research is intended to provide practical insights to empower designers, developers and management to develop smart cities underpinned by Long Range (LoRa) technology. LoRa, one of most prevalent long-range wireless communication technologies, can be used to underpin the development of smart cities. This study draws upon relevant research to gain an understanding of underlying principles and issues involved in the design and management of long-range and low-power networks such as LoRa. This research uses empirical evidence that has been gathered through experiments with a LoRa network to analyse network design and identify challenges and then proposes cost-effective and timely solutions. Particularly, practical measurements of LoRa network dependencies and performance metrics are used to support our proposals. This research identifies a number of network performance metrics that need to be considered and controlled when designing and managing LoRa- specific networks from the perspectives of hardware, software, networking and security

Long-Range Communications in Unlicensed Bands: the Rising Stars in the IoT and Smart City Scenarios

Connectivity is probably the most basic building block of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. Up to know, the two main approaches to provide data access to the \emph{things} have been based either on multi-hop mesh networks using short-range communication technologies in the unlicensed spectrum, or on long-range, legacy cellular technologies, mainly 2G/GSM, operating in the corresponding licensed frequency bands. Recently, these reference models have been challenged by a new type of wireless connectivity, characterized by low-rate, long-range transmission technologies in the unlicensed sub-GHz frequency bands, used to realize access networks with star topology which are referred to a \emph{Low-Power Wide Area Networks} (LPWANs). In this paper, we introduce this new approach to provide connectivity in the IoT scenario, discussing its advantages over the established paradigms in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, and architectural design, in particular for the typical Smart Cities applications

Platforms and Protocols for the Internet of Things

Building a general architecture for the Internet of Things (IoT) is a very complex task, exacerbated by the extremely large variety of devices, link layer technologies, and services that may be involved in such a system. In this paper, we identify the main blocks of a generic IoT architecture, describing their features and requirements, and analyze the most common approaches proposed in the literature for each block. In particular, we compare three of the most important communication technologies for IoT purposes, i.e., REST, MQTT, and AMQP, and we also analyze three IoT platforms: openHAB, Sentilo, and Parse. The analysis will prove the importance of adopting an integrated approach that jointly addresses several issues and is able to flexibly accommodate the requirements of the various elements of the system. We also discuss a use case which illustrates the design challenges and the choices to make when selecting which protocols and technologies to use

LoRa Multi-Hop Networks for Monitoring Underground Mining Environments

Internet of Things applications have gained widespread recognition for their efficacy in typical scenarios, such as smart cities and smart healthcare. Nonetheless, there exist numerous unconventional situations where IoT technologies have not yet been massively applied, though they can be extremely useful. One of such domains is the underground mining sector, where enhancing automation monitoring through wireless communications is of essential significance. In this paper, we focus on the development, implementation, and evaluation of a LoRa-based multi-hop network tailored specifically for monitoring underground mining environments, where data traffic is sporadic, but energy efficiency is of paramount importance. We hence define a synchronization framework that makes it possible for the nodes to sleep for most of the time, waking up only when they need to exchange traffic. Notably, our network achieves a sub 40us proven synchronization accuracy between parent-child pairs with minimum overhead for diverse topologies, rendering it highly viable for subterranean operations. Furthermore, for proper network dimensioning, we model the interplay between network's throughput, frame size, and sampling periods of potential applications. Moreover, we propose a model to estimate devices' duty cycle based on their position within the multi-hop network, along with empirical observations for its validation. The proposed models make it possible to optimize the network's performance to meet the specific demands that can arise from the different subterranean use cases, in which robustness, low power operation, and compliance with radio-frequency regulations are key requirements that must be met

The search for a convergent option to deploy smart grids on IoT scenario

Smart city projects are quickly evolving in several countries as a feasible solution to the urban organization to provide sustainable socioeconomic growth and solve problems that arise as the populations of these cities grow. In this sense, technology application plays an important role in enabling automation of processes, improving the citizen’s quality of life and reducing the costs of public services for municipalities and enterprises. However, automation initiatives of services such as electricity, water, and gas which materialize by the so-called smart grids, have emerged earlier than smart city projects, and are consolidating in several countries. Although smart grid initiatives have arisen earlier to projects of smart cities it represents a subset of the great scenario of IoT that is the vision in which the smart city projects are based. The time difference from developments between these two initiatives made the alternatives of communication technologies for infrastructures construction of communication followed different paths. However, in view of the great scenery of IoT is desirable to determine technologies that provide convergence of a single urban communication infrastructure capable of supporting all applications, whether they are typically IoT or traditional smart grid applications. This work is a review which presents and discusses the two main technologies which are currently best positioned to play this role of convergence that is RF Mesh and LoRaWAN. The strengths and weaknesses of each one of them are also presented and propose that in actuality LoRaWAN is a promising option to offer the required conditions to take on this convergent position2356957

Monitoring of electric buses within an urban smart city environment

A practical experience on monitoring the data generated by electric buses is presented, focusing on energy consumption, charge and state of the batteries. The work is carried out in the framework of a global smart city strategy developed by the H2020 Smart City Lighthouse STARDUST project. The crucial role of the data collection and transmission from electric buses has become evident in this work, so the adopted solutions are covered in detail. A practical electric bus charging station configuration is considered, operating within the city of Pamplona, Spain, with an urban route setting in which electric charging is performed. Various key factors for the practical implementation of the necessary communication infrastructure, including wireless Low Power Wide Area connectivity challenges within the urban scenario settings, based in LoRa/LoRaWAN communication system nodes. The monitoring system architecture is also presented, in which specific machine learning modules in order to collect patterns and visualization of data to enhance planning, operation and maintenance procedures.This work was supported in part by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Gobierno de España (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE) under Project Project RTI2018-095499-B-C31, and in part by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (StardustHolistic and Integrated Urban Model for Smart Cities) under Grant Nº774094

IoT Security Vulnerabilities and Predictive Signal Jamming Attack Analysis in LoRaWAN

Internet of Things (IoT) gains popularity in recent times due to its flexibility, usability, diverse applicability and ease of deployment. However, the issues related to security is less explored. The IoT devices are light weight in nature and have low computation power, low battery life and low memory. As incorporating security features are resource expensive, IoT devices are often found to be less protected and in recent times, more IoT devices have been routinely attacked due to high profile security flaws. This paper aims to explore the security vulnerabilities of IoT devices particularly that use Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs). In this work, LoRaWAN based IoT security vulnerabilities are scrutinised and loopholes are identified. An attack was designed and simulated with the use of a predictive model of the device data generation. The paper demonstrated that by predicting the data generation model, jamming attack can be carried out to block devices from sending data successfully. This research will aid in the continual development of any necessary countermeasures and mitigations for LoRaWAN and LPWAN functionality of IoT networks in general

LPWA-based IoT Technology Selection for Smart Metering Deployment in Urban and Sub Urban Areas: A State Electricity Company Perspective

The need for LPWA-based Internet of Things (IoT) technology for deploying smart metering services is rapidly growing for its ability to manage energy usage in real-time and increase efficiency. However, the problem faced by electric utility companies is how to choose the most appropriate technology. This study uses a techno-economic approach to compare the two most widely used technological alternatives, namely establishing LoRaWAN as a non-licensed LPWA technology or leasing NB-IoT as a licensed LPWA technology owned by a telecommunications operator. Case studies conducted in the urban area of Bandung and sub-urban city of Tasikmalaya as an example of a typical town in Indonesia. The results showed that LoRaWAN and NB-IoT are both technically and business feasible to be implemented with their respective advantages. LoRaWAN is superior in battery lifetime, business model, speed of implementation, and total costs, whereas NB-IoT is superior in range, capacity, quality of service, security, and ecosystem support. Using PLN's perspective as a national electricity company in Indonesia, LoRaWAN has a Net Present Value of 23% higher than NB-IoT in the 10th year

Iot-enabled smart cities: evolution and outlook

For the last decade the Smart City concept has been under development, fostered by the growing urbanization of the world’s population and the need to handle the challenges that such a scenario raises. During this time many Smart City projects have been executed–some as proof-of-concept, but a growing number resulting in permanent, production-level deployments, improving the operation of the city and the quality of life of its citizens. Thus, Smart Cities are still a highly relevant paradigm which needs further development before it reaches its full potential and provides robust and resilient solutions. In this paper, the focus is set on the Internet of Things (IoT) as an enabling technology for the Smart City. In this sense, the paper reviews the current landscape of IoT-enabled Smart Cities, surveying relevant experiences and city initiatives that have embedded IoT within their city services and how they have generated an impact. The paper discusses the key technologies that have been developed and how they are contributing to the realization of the Smart City. Moreover, it presents some challenges that remain open ahead of us and which are the initiatives and technologies that are under development to tackle them.This research was partially funded by Spain State Research Agency (AEI) by means of the project FIERCE: Future Internet Enabled Resilient CitiEs (RTI2018-093475-A-I00). Prof. Song was supported by Smart City R&D project of the Korea Agency for Infrastructure Technology Advancement (KAIA) grant funded by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT), Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) (Grant 18NSPS-B149386-01)