LoRaWAN Range Extender for Industrial IoT

The LoRaWAN technology, an example of low power wide area network, is considered a possible IoT-derived solution for realizing private cellular (single-hop) communications in the industrial domain. However, despite LoRaWAN promises long range and dense environments with many obstacles (as the industrial ones), it may suffer from coverage issue. Additionally, the inverse relationship between data rates and range may be unacceptable for many industrial applications. In this article, an innovative LoRaWAN range extender (based on an enhanced LoRaWAN node) is described, and its integration in the infrastructure of industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)-enabled industrial wireless networks is presented. A frame relay strategy is suggested, thus avoiding to tradeoff the highest data rates against an increased sensitivity. The feasibility of the solution is formally verified and the features of the realized proof-of-concept prototype, based on commercially available hardware, are discussed. The experimental results, obtained with a purposely designed test bench, show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. In particular, the range extender is transparent for legacy LoRaWAN networks as confirmed by correct relaying of uplink and downlink for different types of LoRaWAN message.