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Low-Power, Long-Range, High-Data Transmission Using Wi-Fi and LoRa

Conference Paper · September 2016

DOI: 10.1109/ICITCS.2016.7740351

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Dong Hyun Kim Jong Deok Kim

Korea University Pusan National University
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 Low-Power, Long-Range, High-Data Transmission
Using Wi-Fi and LoRa

Dong Hyun Kim Jun Young Lim Jong Deok Kim*

Dept. of Computer Science and Dept. of Computer Science and Dept. of Computer Science and
Engineering Engineering Engineering
Pusan National University Pusan National University Pusan National University
Pusan, South Korea Pusan, South Korea Pusan, South Korea
dhkim1106@pusan.ac.kr. wnsdud1249@mobile.re.kr kimjd@pusan.ac.kr.

Summary— Along with the commercialization of the Internet
of Things (IoT) technology, the demand for long-range, low-
power and long-range, large amount of data transmission arises.
However, there has been no such communication technology to
satisfy the transmission. The Wi-Fi is able to send large amounts
of data with its broadband technology, but because of high power
consumption, it has to use firm power. The LoRa technology is
available for long-range and low-power communication but
because of low transmission rate, it is not suitable for
transmitting large amount of data. The purpose of this study is to
overcome those problems, design and suggest the multi interface
communication module supporting Wi-Fi and LoRa technology.
Keywords— IEEE802.11, Broadcasting system, ULP, Burst loss,
Broadcast packet loss
compared to 3G/4G technologies but disadvantage is low
transmission rate. For example, to deal with the incident at sea,
which requires sensing information such as speed and capacity
of ocean currents, location information and multimedia data;
therefore, communication module using both Wi-Fi and LoRa
should be developed.
The purpose of this study is to design and examine the multi-
interface communication module based on Wi-Fi and LoRa.
II. DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF MULTI
INTERFACE IOT SYSTEM BASED ON WI-FI AND LORA.

Index Terms— IoT, IEEE802.11, LPWAN, LoRa, Multi- A. Hardware Composition

Interface
I. INTRODUCTION
Internet of things (IoT) is a global infrastructure for
communicating between humans and things with the
interconnecting network and also providing intellectual
services based on situation recognition technology. The IoT
has been a critical technology combined with mobile, Cloud
and big data technologies in the hyper-connected society.
The multi interface communication technology this paper
suggests is the communication module using both Wi-Fi and
LoRa technology. The Wi-Fi enables the high transmission
rate and long-range communication but because of its power
consumption problem, it is limited to receive regular services.
While LoRa with its low-power and long-range technology
would be a solution for the power consumption problem, but
because of its limited transmission rate, it is not suitable for
sending large amount of multimedia data.

To create the environment for the IoT, the object

recognition services and connection between humans, and
objects and between objects themselves are needed. The center
of this environment is there Wi-Fi and LoRa technology.
The Wi-Fi technology based on IEEE 802.11 is the
broadband wireless accessing technology using the ISM band
and has been widely used in laptops and smart phones. The
technology is available for high-speed communication,
therefore, suitable for large amount of data such as multimedia
data but its power consumption is not applicable to the IoT
technology.
The LoRa communication technology is a low-power, long- Figure 1. IoT system composition based on Wi-Fi & LoRa
range wireless protocol developed by Semtech. The advantages
of the LoRa technology are low power consumption
communication, high extendibility and high efficiency
* : Corresponding Author

978-1-5090-3765-0/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE

 Figure 1 represents the IoT system composition based on
WiFi and LoRa to offer various services. The Wi-Fi & LoRa
module is connected with various devices providing LoRa and
the Elix board providing Wi-Fi. The devices providing LoRa
is composed of the transceiver which is using sx-1272 chipset
developed by Semtech and Waspmote, Raspberry Pi and
Arduino. The gateway is the device to connect the sensing
data collected from LoRa module to Internet. To save the
sensing data, Amazon, IBM and Google Cloud are used for
effective management and accessibility. Based on the data
saved in the Cloud, the application is created to monitor the
status of sensor.
B. Software platform Design
Figure 2. Software platform block diagram
The software platform in this paper is composed of sensor
data department that is collecting data from each sensor, Wi-Fi
handler that is creating and sending the wireless packet
through Wi-Fi, LoRa handler that is sending the sensor data
through LoRa module and power & data scheduler that is
deciding to choose whether Wi-Fi or LoRa depending on data
to be transmitted, which are illustrated in figure 2. The
characteristic of the software platform is that it is conducting
both power works and data scheduling to save the power.
C. Implementation of System
Wi-Fi module Gateway Wasp mote
Figure 3. Implemented Wi-Fi AP, LoRa gateway and end
device
Figure 3 represents the implemented Wi-Fi AP using the
Alix3d2 board made from PCEngine and for the LAN card,
IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n wireless Mini-PCI adaptor card called
SR71-A from UBIQUITI, which is using the AR9160 Chipset
from Atheros.
For the LoRa gateway and mote, Waspmote from Libelium
using sx-1272 chip from Semtech and LoRa gateway were
used.
III. EXPERIENCE & EVALUATION
To evaluate the performance of the developed device,
wireless LAN AP, station, LoRa gateway and LoRa mote were
installed at the seaside. The wireless LAN was used to
measure RSSI values according to distance and data rate while
LoRa to measure RSSI and SNR.
Figure 4. Experiment for performance evaluation at seaside
Table 1. Experiment result according to distance between
Wi-Fi and LoRa
Table 1 shows the RSSI and data rate of Wi-Fi when the
distance between AP & LoRa gateway and station & LoRa
mote was 6, 15 and 20km. Also, RSSI and data rate of LoRa
are shown when LoRa antenna gain was 4.5dBi and 8dBi. In
case of Wi-Fi, longer the distance, lower the RSSI as well as
data rate, which can be explained by data rate according to
receive sensibility of Wi-Fi LAN card. In case of LoRa, the
RSSI and SNR were measured according to distance and
antenna gain. The results of RSSI were similar in both antenna
and any distance, which showed -115dB. However, higher the
antenna gain, better the value of SNR. Accordingly, the data
rate is expected to improve.
 IV. CONCLUSION Techniques of Realistic Experience-type Contents based
Smart Street]
To universally supply IoT service, various sensor data with
versatile application and transmission technology for large REFERENCES
amount of data are needed. In this paper, the multi interface
communication module was designed, implemented and
[1] ANSI/IEEE Std 802.11, 1999 Edition, Part Ⅱ: Wireless LAN Medium
evaluated, which was to transfer low-power, long-range large Access Control(MAC) and Physical Layer(PHY) Specifications,
amount of data using wireless LAN and LoRa. The wireless ISO/IEC 8802-11:1999 (E).
LAN was able to communicate high transmission rate and [2] Michele Nitti, Luigi Atzori, Irena Pletikosa Cvijikj, “Friendship
long range while Lora was able to communicate low-power Selection in the Social Internet of Things: Challenges and Possible
and long-range. The usability of this module in applicable area Strategies,” IEEE Internet of Things Journal, pp. 240- 247 Vol. 2, Issue
3, 2015.
would be further studied after building the test bed using real [3] Alix 3C2, http://pcengines.ch/alix3c2.htm
sensor. [4] EMP-8602+S, http://www.engeniustech.com
[5] http://lora-alliance.org/
ACKNOWLEDGMENT [6] http://www.semtech.com.

This work was supported by the ICT R&D program of

MSIP/IITP. [2015(1711021663) Research on Implementation

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