Firmware Distribution with Erasure Code for IoT applications on IEEE 802.15.4g Mesh Network

Sub-1 GHz (920 MHz) frequency bands for LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) wireless communications systems are attracting attention from various IoT applications. Environmental and infrastructure monitoring systems, such as smart meter, ground inclinometer, and bridge sensor, are widely deployed. AsLPWAN systems operating on Sub-1 GHz bands can provide long distance communications,, a large number of network devices can connect to networks. Although these networks can be configured in a star configuration for a relatively small area, the mesh configuration has been emerging recently. IEEE 802.15.4g-FSK PHY/OFDM PHY is a typical PHY technology in mesh networks for the purpose of transferring IoT application data over a wider area. To distribute the same data such as firmware to LPWAN devices during network operation, improving distribution efficiency becomes critical. On the one hand, using broadcast transmission, the delivery confirmation cannot be performed. On the other hand, unicast transmission is very time consuming if the number of IoT devices is large. Therefore, we proposed a novel firmware distribution method using erasure code for large scale IoT networks. Our ns-3 simulations demonstrate that the proposed method can improve the distribution efficiency by up to 1.8 times compared to conventional methods and achieve higher spectrum efficiency for IEEE 802.15.4g-OFDM PHY.