LoRaWAN-Based Multicast and Disruption-Tolerant Protocols for Firmware Update Over-the-Air

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the foundation for smart cities, smart industries, smart agriculture, smart transportation and smart health, with the promise of interconnecting billion of devices to the Internet. Updating these devices using over-the-air techniques to fix bugs, to make software upgrade and to enhance security is a complex and time-consuming task. In this paper, we propose two new over-the-air update protocols for devices communicating using LoRaWAN. The first protocol provides a multicast distribution of software modules forming the firmware of devices. The second protocol is an enhancement of the first one that implements a disruptiontolerant adaptive update scheme for resource-constrained devices that can randomly wake up and join the IoT network. The experimental results, with in-field measurements, show good performance in terms of update size, update speed, network overhead and power consumption compared to the standard existing solution for LoRaWAN.