Aernouts, M.

Eeghem, M. V.

Famaey, Jeroen

Haxhibeqiri, Jetmir

Hoebeke, Jeroen

Karaağaç, Abdulkadir

Moons, Bart

Quattrocchi, S.

Rossey, Jen

English

Ghent University Academic Bibliography

DEMO: A Cloud-based Virtual Network Operatorfor Managing Multimodal LPWANs and DevicesBart Moons∗ (bamoons.moons@ugent.be), J. Haxhibeqiri∗, M. V. Eeghem∗, J. Rossey∗, A. Karagaac∗,S. Quattrocchi∗, M. Aernouts†, J. Famaey†, and J. Hoebeke∗∗ IDLab, Ghent University – imec, Ghent, Belgium. † IDLab, University of Antwerp – imec, Antwerp, Belgium.Abstract—The Internet of Things (IoT) has given rise to differ-ent sub-GHz Low Power Area Network (LPWAN) technologies,each having specific characteristics. Today, devices can supportmultiple LPWAN technologies, picking the best technology de-pending on application requirements and availability. Realizingsuch multimodal communication introduces complexity at boththe device and network side. In this demo, we show how we cancontrol and manage multimodal LPWA networks by a VirtualNetwork Operator (VNO) using unified control APIs based on theOMA Lightweight M2M protocol. On top, we demonstrate theuse of a single stack across different LPWANs by implementingan adaptation layer between the IP and MAC layer and thefeasibility to achieve real multimodal communication.I. INTRODUCTIONRecent years have shown the rise of different LPWANtechnologies such as LoRa, DASH-7 and Sigfox, which areused in the IoT for different settings and applications. In orderto make use of multiple technologies, the end nodes can beequipped with support for multiple radio technologies. Suchmultimodal capabilities introduce complexity in the manage-ment of the involved LPWANs with heterogeneous APIs anddesigning applications on top. Our demo shows a VNO thathomogenizes network management by means of distributedDocker containers that expose unified OMA LwM2M [1]API’s to control and manage the network equipment. UsingStatic Context Header Compression (SCHC), a single IPv6-based stack is used for efficient end-to-end communicationindependent of the underlying LPWA technology. In sectionII we will describe the system design while in III we showstep by step how we use the unified API’s to configure thegateways and establish end-to-end IPv6 communication.II. DEMO SYSTEM OVERVIEWThe system overview of the demonstrator is given in Figure1 and is divided in three parts. The leftmost part showsthe multimodal device, having support for both DASH-7 andLoRaWAN. At the center, the used LPWA network equipmentis shown which consists of a DASH-7 gateway, a LoRagateway and a LoRaWAN Network Server (NS). The DASH-7 gateway consists of a modem for packet reception anda Raspberry Pi for packet forwarding. At the right side,the Virtual Network Operator (VNO) architecture is shown,divided in a control/management plane and a data plane.The OMA LwM2M protocol [1] is used by the control planeto manage and configure all LPWAN equipment. To achievethis, the equipment is turned into LwM2M compliant devicesby means of a Docker container that converts the domesticAPIs into LwM2M APIs. Inside the container, we have thetechnology specific adapter part, whereas the Virtual DeviceManager (VDM) and the LwM2M Client are generic acrossLPWAN equipment. The Adapter consumes the custom API’sto interact with the equipment. The VDM makes a bridgebetween the LwM2M client and the custom adapter, whilethe LwM2M client exposes all configurable parameters of theLPWAN equipment as LwM2M resources. For that purpose,novel LwM2M data models have been foreseen. At the VNOside, the control plane consists of LwM2M server that caninteract with each of the LwM2M clients in all the LPWANequipments.For realizing the data plane at the VNO, we foresee oneDocker container per LPWAN deployment that is able toexchange data with that network. As the LoRa NS has an on-board MQTT broker, the container will consist of an MQTTclient. Data packets received by the LoRa gateway are pub-lished to the LoRa MQTT broker on the LoRa Network Serverand received by the LoRa MQTT client inside the Dockercontainer. The DASH-7 gateways are equipped with an MQTTclient that is running on the Raspberry Pi, so there can be asingle, central broker in the container to support bi-directionalcommunication over DASH-7. Next to this technology specificpart, the container also has a generic part that offers a uniformway to pass the data for further processing, independent of theLPWAN technology being used. Here, we have opted to useMQTT again, where data is handed over to a Click server viaa broker [2].With these components, it is possible to bidirectionallyexchange data. Next, in order to only have a single stackacross the different LPWAN technologies being used, we havechosen to use a CoAP-UDP-IPV6 stack in combination with acustom SCHC adaptation layer [3] between layer 2 and 3. Thislayer can efficiently compress the packets, dealing with thelimited packets sizes of LPWANs. At the VNO side, the clickserver acts as the central data management unit, handling the(de)compression, the (de)fragmentation and the connection tothe IPv6 network. At the end device side, an embedded coun-terpart of this tack is foreseen. These devices are B-L072Z-LRWAN development kits powered by an STM32L072CZMCU and a SX1276 transceiver. They run the Open SourceStack implementation of the DASH-7 alliance protocol (OSS-MQTT Broker/data/controlMQTT ManagerLPWANOperatorClickStackIP RoutingInternetSCHCDocker ContainerDASH7 MQTT BrokerMQTT ClientDocker ContainerLoRaMQTT ClientMQTT ClientLoRa GatewayUDP pkt forwardingCONTROL PLANEDOCKERAdaptor VDM AnjayDataLoRa Network ServerDATA PLANEGW BridgeCONTROL PLANEMQTT brokerLoRaServerApp ServerDOCKER AnjayLwM2M clientVirtual Device ManagerAdapter CoAPJSON UDPD7 GatewayRaspberry PiCONTROL PLANEDOCKERAdaptor VDM AnjayMultimodalNodeLeshanLwM2M back-endManagement logicBSVirtual Network OperatorNetwork EquipmentDATA PLANEDataMQTT ClientPyd7 libNetwork DevicesLoRa - DASH-7 - …MACSCHC adaptation layerIPv6UDPCoAPFig. 1. Demo system overview.7) [4], which supports run-time reconfiguration of the physicallayer as well as a full OSI-stack implementation. Our setup,however, only requires the use of the PHY- and MAC-layer.On top, a CoAP - UDP - IPv6 stack is used, with the customSCHC adaptation layer.III. DEMONSTRATIONOur demonstration shows how different LPWAN equipmentcan be controlled and configured through a cloud-based VirtualNetwork Operator (VNO). In this demo we use two differentsub 1 GHz technologies: LoRa and DASH-7.The first step demonstrates the roll-out of new LPWAnetwork equipment that needs to be managed by the VNO.The LwM2M compliant LoRa equipment is deployed andautomatically discovered by the VNO. Using the LwM2M datamodels, the configuration is performed by the VNO such thatdata can be exchanged between the new LoRa deployment andthe VNO.Once the data plane parameters have been configured in theLoRa gateway and NS, devices can be registered to the LoRaNS. The registration can be done by passing the AppEUI,DevEUI and APPKey of the end node to the LoRa NS whenover-the-air-activation is used.From this point on, the device can start exchanging datapackets with the LoRa NS. A packet sent by the device iscompressed by the SCHC adaptation layer. After compression,the device will configure the radio to send packets with ChirpSpread Spectrum (CSS) modulation, so it can reach the LoRagateway. Once a packet has been picked up by the LoRagateway it is forwarded to the LoRa NS and will eventuallyreach the VNO over MQTT. There, the received packet willbe decompressed and forwarded towards the correct client inthe IPv6 network.Next, a device from the IPv6 network will try to send a largepacket to the device, which only has an active LoRa connectionusing SF12, and thus only able to receive 51 bytes. The VNOwill therefore wait for a better connection to pop up. For this,the DASH-7 communication is configured by setting up thecorrect data plane parameters (MQTT broker IP and MQTTbroker topics) on the DASH-7 gateway using the APIs and theLwM2M server at the VNO.Once the network has been set up, the device can makeuse of this higher bandwidth network. The device switchesfrom CSS to 2-GFSK modulation and is being configured tosend DASH-7 packets. Once such a packet is picked up by theDASH-7 gateway, it will be sent to an MQTT broker insidea Docker container towards the VNO. The network operatornow knows that the device is connected to this network andwill send the large, pending packet, which could not be sentover LoRa.ACKNOWLEDGMENTPart of this research was funded by the Flemish FWO SBOS004017N IDEAL-IoT (Intelligent DEnse And Longe rangeIoT networks) project, and by the ICON project MuSCLe-IoT. MuSCLe-IoT is a project realized in collaboration withimec, with project support from VLAIO (Flanders Innovationand Entrepreneurship). Project partners are imec, Flash PrivateMobile Networks, Engie M2M, Sensolus and Aertssen.REFERENCES[1] Open Mobile Alliance, “Lightweight Machine to Machine TechnicalSpecification,” February 2017.[2] E. Kohler, R. Morris, B. Chen, J. Jannotti, and M. F. Kaashoek, “The clickmodular router,” ACM Trans. Comput. Syst., vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 263–297,Aug. 2000.[3] A. Minaburo, Acklio, L. Toutain, and C. Gomez, “Lpwan static contextheader compression (schc) and fragmentation for ipv6 and udp,” Internetdraft, IETF, 2017.[4] (Last visited 24/4/2018) The OSS-7 website. [Online]. Available:http://mosaic-lopow.github.io/dash7-ap-open-source-stack/

DEMO : a cloud-based virtual network operator for managing multimodal LPWANs and devices

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DEMO: A Cloud-based Virtual Network Operator for Managing Multimodal LPWANs and Devices

Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) has given rise to different sub-GHz Low Power Area Network (LPWAN) technologies, each having specific characteristics. Today, devices can support multiple LPWAN technologies, picking the best technology depending on application requirements and availability. Realizing such multimodal communication introduces complexity at both the device and network side. In this demo, we show how we can control and manage multimodal LPWA networks by a Virtual Network Operator (VNO) using unified control APIs based on the OMA Lightweight M2M protocol. On top, we demonstrate the use of a single stack across different LPWANs by implementing an adaptation layer between the IP and MAC layer and the feasibility to achieve real multimodal communication

Haxhibeqiri, J.

Rossey, J.

Karagaac, A.

Aernouts, Michiel

Hoebeke, J.

Institutional Repository Universiteit Antwerpen

DEMO: a cloud-based virtual network operator for managing multimodal LPWANs and devices

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8568897/file/8568899.pdf

DEMO : a cloud-based virtual network operator for managing multimodal LPWANs and devices

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Institutional Repository Universiteit Antwerpen