An Advanced IoT Framework for Long Range Connectivity and Secure Data Transmission Leveraging LoRa and ASCON Encryption

In the rapidly evolving Internet-of-Things (IoT) landscape, the need for long-range communication and robust security measures has become paramount. This paper presents a cost-effective and innovative IoT communication framework utilizing Raspberry Pi Pico microcontrollers, LoRa RYLR896 radio modules, and ASCON-based encryption to facilitate secure and efficient data transmission between resource-constrained devices. The affordability of the Raspberry Pi Pico, LoRa RYLR896, and ESP32 microcontroller make the proposed solution highly accessible and economically viable for widespread deployment. The strengths of ASCON, the NIST-selected lightweight cryptographic standard, are leveraged, providing both encryption and authentication in a single, memory-efficient container, outperforming traditional AES in IoT applications. The system is implemented with a key exchange algorithm that employs pre-shared keys and a key exchange protocol to securely negotiate encryption keys between devices. The approach incorporates two environmental sensors, the AHTx0 temperature sensor and BME280 atmospheric pressure sensor, to continuously monitor and transmit data to a central receiver using an ESP32 microcontroller. The performance of the proposed framework is evaluated through comprehensive experiments, concentrating on crucial communication metrics such as Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), power consumption, and memory usage. The findings demonstrate the reasonable performance of the communication framework for IoT applications. Furthermore, the system features a built-in local data storage mechanism for circumstances where Wi-Fi connectivity is unavailable, such as rural areas, saving the sensor data as CSV files on the ESP32 microcontroller.