A Novel Firmware Update Over-The-Air System for LoRa Networks

LoRa has emerged as a novel Internet of Things (IoT) communication paradigm, featuring with long-range and low-power transmission capabilities. With the widespread deployment of LoRa networks, the demand to perform Firmware Update Over-The-Air (FUOTA) tasks has become increasingly critical for unattended LoRa devices. However, in practice, three fundamental problems that hinder the performance of FUOTA tasks are revealed, including low energy efficiency, poor transmission reliability, and biased multicast grouping. In this demo, we present a novel FUOTA system, the first work that offers an effective and sustainable solution to achieve energy-efficient and reliable over-the-air firmware updates in LoRa networks. In particular, this system incorporates threefold key modules: delta scripting, channel coding, and beamforming. The delta scripting algorithm unlocks the capability of incremental update, the channel coding scheme ensures the reliability and robustness of large-scale firmware image distribution, and the beamforming strategy as an optional module can further serve the unicast user. Thus, this demo presents a working example of functionality customization to show the efficacy and feasibility of our FUOTA system in LoRa networks.