Towards Increasing the LoRa Network Coverage: A Flying Gateway

The Internet of Things (IoT) technology has been emerging since the last two decades. It is difficult to ignore its presence as it is almost related to every aspects of our daily life, starting from smart phones to wearable medical devices and smart vehicles. A plethora of communication solutions have been developed to meet the two main features of IoT: low power consumption and long range transmissions. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) also are witnessing an increasing interest in a lot of different scenarios and with different roles, including the integration with IoT. Extending the coverage of IoT to rural and remote areas by using UAVs and satellite communications is envisioned as an improvement of the IoT technology towards the upcoming 5G network. This paper presents an approach integrating the aforementioned technologies to develop a flying LoRa gateway, whose aim is to extend the coverage of LoRa networks on-demand in the required locations and for the required time.