IRONWAN: Increasing Reliability of Overlapping Networks in LoRaWAN

LoRaWAN deployments follow an ad-hoc deployment model that has organically led to overlapping communication networks, sharing the wireless spectrum, and completely unaware of each other. uses ALOHA-style where it is almost impossible schedule transmission between networks belonging different owners properly. The inability will cause inter-network interference, which increase node-to-gateway message losses gateway-to-node acknowledgement failures. This problem likely get worse as number increase. In response this problem, we propose IRONWAN, a overlay network shares resources without modifications underlying protocols. It utilises broadcast nature radio enables gateway-to-gateway facilitate search for failed messages transmit acknowledgements already received cached in network's gateways. IRONWAN two novel algorithms, Real-time Message Inter-arrival Predictor, highlight when server not expected uplink message. Interference Predictor ensures extra does negatively impact bandwidth. We evaluate on 1000-node simulator with up ten gateways 10-node testbed 2-gateways. Results show can achieve 12\% higher packet delivery ratio (PDR) total per node while increasing minimum PDR by 28\%. These improvements save 50\% node's energy. Finally, demonstrate comparable performance optimal solution (wired, centralised) but 2-32 times lower costs. also 14\% better compared FLIP, wired-distributed protocol certain scenarios.