Towards Secure Edge-Based LoRaWAN for Next Generation Wireless Communications

The next generation of mobile networks called sixth generation (6G) is predicted to support a highly dense network for future of Internet of Everything (IoE) with up to 500 billion devices, leading to a requirement shift from rate-centric services towards ultra massive Machine Type Communication (umMTC). Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) are capable of providing long-range coverage for umMTC devices with low-power consumption at a low cost. For example, LoRaWAN technology is known for delivering large coverage areas between 1 and 10$\sim$kms, and more than 5 years of battery lifetime, making it an exceptional candidate technology to support the IoE paradigm. However, LoRaWAN comes with its drawbacks, including scalability, operational latency, and security issues. To overcome such challenges, we propose a novel holistic edge-based LoRaWAN encryption system, in which, part of the computation and authentication is moved to the gateway, i.e., the edge. The rest of the computation occurs in the cloud, at the application server, thus reducing operational latency. Edge-based applications typically demand low latency, real-time, and intelligent computing applications, just to name a few. The suggested approach overcomes the inevitable drawbacks of the classic cloud-based LoRaWAN architectures, as well as enhances important 5G services such as Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC) and umMTC. Given these early but encouraging results, we examine the system challenges linked to latency to demonstrate how the proposed solution could be implemented with minor modifications to existing protocols and technologies.