Demonstration of a library prototype to build LoRa mesh networks for the IoT

Abstract

LoRa has become popular in the Internet of Things (IoT) domain as a Low Power, Wide Area Network (LPWAN) radio technology providing low-power and long-range communication. In a typical IoT application, the LoRaWAN architecture is applied, where LoRa end nodes communicate their data to a gateway, which then over the Internet sends these data to a cloud-based service for further processing. However, LoRa can also be used standalone for the communication between LoRa nodes forming a mesh network. In this demo paper we present a library called LoRaMesher, which runs on LoRa nodes and forms a mesh network among these nodes. By implementing a distance vector routing protocol, LoRaMesher enables two nodes to communicate data packets with each other while the other nodes in the mesh network operate as routers. LoRaMesher can open the possibility for new distributed applications hosted only on such tiny IoT nodes.