Vehicle-Mounted Fog-Node with LoRaWAN for Rural Data Collection

Internet of things (IoT) services have grown to become an integral part of our everyday lives, however, the gap in IoT connectivity between rural and urban areas is growing, leading to what is called the digital divide problem. In this regard, we propose an architecture for IoT data collection in rural areas via mobile fog nodes. We study the effect of gateway mobility in LoRaWAN on the network communication flow and transmission parameters. The limits for reliable communication at different moving speeds are analytically computed, then validated by both numerical simulations and real experiments. The numerical results show that it is beneficial to use spreading factors (SF) lower than 11 for vehicle speeds up to 150 km/hr, with SF7 being the optimum in synchronized transmission.