Large and reliable data transfer service for LoRa mesh network applications

Recently, LoRa mesh networks have appeared as a communication technology for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Through node-to-node communication, novel distributed IoT applications that extend beyond the capabilities of the LoRaWAN architecture can be enabled. However, current technologies for LoRa networks do not provide mechanisms for large and reliable data transfers between IoT nodes. This paper presents a service for such data transfers in LoRa mesh network applications, along with the protocol and formats used for inter-node communication. We explain the design choices and detail the implementation decisions to ensure that this service is practically usable. To this end, the service was integrated into the LoRaMesher library and is available as an open-source operational implementation. In experiments with ten real nodes and two network topologies, we observe that the service effectively achieves a large and reliable message delivery in an environment of concurrent transmissions and packet losses. In contrast, the cost of reliability for large data transfers is an increased number of messages and a higher delivery time. With the integration of the service into the LoRaMesher technology, developers now have a library that provides a reliable and large payload service for LoRa mesh network applications, eliminating the need to develop such capacity as a specific application-level solution.