2019 Sixth International Conference on Internet of Things: Systems, Management and Security (IOTSMS)

LoRaWAN IoT Solutions for SmartCities

Agustín Candia*, Federico Lo Grasso†, Laura Fava*, Soledad Natacha Represa‡, Javier Diaz*, Diego Vilches*
*Laboratorio de Investigación en Nuevas Tecnologías Informáticas, UNLP
La Plata, Argentina
acandia@linti.unlp.edu.ar, lfava@info.unlp.edu.ar, jdiaz@unlp.edu.ar, dvilches@info.unlp.edu.ar
†
Centro Superior para el Procesamiento de la Información
La Plata, Argentina
flograsso@cespi.unlp.edu.ar
‡
Centro de Investigacoines del Medioambiente , CONICET-UNLP -La Plata, Argentina
Grupo de Cartografía GeoAmbiental y Teledetección,UPV -Valencia, España
solrepresa@gmail.com

Abstract—Wireless communications and the Internet of
Things (IoT) paradigm are keys to transforming traditional
cities into smart cities, as they provide the necessary
infrastructure to improve the services that reach citizens. This
article presents a pilot project for smart cities developed in the
city of La Plata, proposing an intelligent infrastructure for
public lighting based on LoRaWAN technology that can serve
as a basis to deploy other solutions for Smart Cities. An end-to-
end solution is presented, from the intervention of a street
luminaire with air quality sensors, its transmission through the
network and consolidation in an IoT platform developed for this
purpose. Results of the deployment in a real urban scenario, are
described in this paper.
Keywords— smart cities, LoRaWAN, smart lighting, Internet
of Things, air quality, low cost sensors.
I. INTRODUCTION
A collaborative project between University (Universidad
Nacional de La Plata, UNLP), La Plata Municipality and
private sector, is presented as an experience on the
development of a LoRaWAN network for research and
production of experimental IoT developments on SmartCities.
As a witness pilot, we took the field of intelligent luminaires,
developing an experimental testbed in the streets of La Plata
city, Argentina, where a network of luminaires was deployed
and controlled remotely. Likewise, some luminaires were
expanded in their functional aspect, with the incorporation of
sensors for air quality. The results obtained at the moment
provide a contribution to the construction of future smart
cities.
Several socio-economic factors have led to an increase in
population density, generated mainly by population growth
and a high concentration in large cities of the world. To date,
more than half of the world's population is living in urban
areas, where Latin America being one of the regions with the
highest percentage of concentration close to 81% [1].
That is causing important changes in our lifestyles, social
behavior and health. An intelligent and sustainable city model
must offer solutions integrating new devices and services and
organizing processes within the city, promoting the efficient
use of resources and a harmonious functioning of social
development.
In this context, and towards a conscious change in the
terms of energy optimization, many Town Councils
throughout the country are investing in the replacement of
traditional sodium lamps with LED lamps with low energy
consumption. This brings a more controlled and rational use
of energy, reducing an average of 60% [2] (this will depend
on the type of LED technology used) the consumption costs.
At the same time, if the devices can be connected and
operated remotely, it could achieve a 20% extra reduction in
its operation, being able to dimerize (regulate the energy in
one or more bulbs in order to vary the intensity of the light
they emit) during non-peak hours, eliminate daytime burn-
outs due to faults and optimize the maintenance tasks of
technical staff in the street.
Not less importantly, in connection to technological costs
in particular referred to radio frequency integrated circuits,
allowing to imagine in a profitable context of the private
sector to add communication technology to the luminaire, at
the same time as the change of sodium lamps by LEDs take
place. Internet of Things (IoT) solutions from mobile
operators (NB-IoT and LTE-M) or LPWANs networks (such
as LoRaWan or Sigfox) can offer low cost, ubiquitous
coverage in a city, and are designed specifically to connect
services and sensors of the city, including luminaire devices.
II. DEVELOPMENT OF A WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK
A. LoRaWAN network
Up to now, different approaches to gather data from
connected “things” have been based on either multihop mesh
networks using short-range communication technologies in
the unlicensed spectrum (like ZigBee [3]), or long-range
legacy cellular technologies, mainly 2G/GSM/GPRS/3G in
the corresponding licensed frequency bands [4].
Recently, a number of different platforms following the
LPWAN paradigm have arisen characterized by low rate and
long range transmission technologies in the unlicensed
frequency bands. LPWANs are actively considered by
academia and industry as the future wireless communication
standard for IoT [5].
For this Project, LoRaWAN technology was selected as
the central core of a wireless sensor network in the city of La
Plata and nearby towns. Thinking about IoT solutions, where
large data volumes are not required per node, but large areas
of coverage and equipment density (in many cases with
limited energy capacities), LPWANs (low power wide area
networks) fits perfectly to the needs of a city in the process of

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 2019 Sixth International Conference on Internet of Things: Systems, Management and Security (IOTSMS)

a technological expansion. Also, deployment and operation it was possible to obtain a wide coverage of the urban area of
costs are low compared to other similar technologies and there La Plata and a large part of the city of Berisso and Ensenada.
is availability of equipment and operators in the local market.
LoRa is a spread spectrum modulation technique derived
from chirp spread spectrum (CSS) technology developed and
patented by Semtech. Its chipset could be incorporated into
devices manufactured by off the shelf solution providers or
integrated in existing solutions, as the one described in this
paper. LoRa contains only the physical layer protocol and is
suitable to be used in P2P communications between nodes.
While LoRaWAN, is an open specification developed by the
LoRa Alliance® [3] based on the LoRa physical layer, and
includes the logical and network layer too, so it is possible to
send the information to any Base Station already connected to
a Cloud platform.
The network architecture is deployed in a star-of-stars
topology in which gateways relay messages between end-
devices and a central network server. The gateways are
connected to the network server via standard IP connections Fig. 1. LoRaWAN gateways coverage. La Plata, Argentina.
and act as a transparent bridge, simply converting RF packets
to IP packets and vice versa. Finally, the Network server will To evaluate the reach and capacity of the network to transmit
act forwarding packets to our application server to be handled data, a portable node was used. At the same time, a software
for the final user. was developed that allows to visualize in a map the power
It’s main features are: long-range communications while received in the tests carried out and to estimate the range of
maintaining low energy consumption (2km to 5km in urban the signal. The LoRaWAN network proved to be sufficient in
environments and up to 15km in cleared areas); operation in terms of scope and coverage area, observing a better reception
the unlicensed radio spectrum in the Industrial, Scientific and of signal in residential areas (gateways located in Gonnet and
Medical (ISM) band (433 MHz, 868 MHz and 915 MHz.) ; Berisso), in comparison to urbanized areas (gateway in the
network services for message confirmation; several layers of center of the city). Figure 2 illustrates the scope in the different
AES 128 encryption: network sessions between nodes and areas.
Gateways and end to end encryption at application level;
multicasting and activation / registration in the "over the air"
network, with no limitations on the number of transferred
packets.
It is important to consider that since LoRa works on
unlicensed bands, there are restrictions regarding the use of air
time for packet transmissions. Different regulations limit the
work cycle to 1% (Europe for example, in 7.2.3 of the ETSI
EN300.220 standard ) [4]
This will imply certain restrictions in the use of this
technology, for example, for applications that require real time
data. Fig. 2. Signal strength map, portable node field testing.

In terms of scalability, on how the network will perform,
with a massive use of devices connected to the network and
transmitting for different use cases, some authors [5] [6],
expose certain restrictions and possible actions that should be
taken into account to scale solutions in LoRaWAN.
B. Field Deployment
La Plata, together with the cities of Ensenada and Berisso,
make up the Gran La Plata region, with a 2010 population of
793,365 inhabitants [7] and 1100 square kilometers.
Radio base equipments (LoRa gateways) were installed
using the infrastructure of the UNLP(Universidad Nacional de
La Plata) and private towers, and the fiber optic backbone that
connects them. We used 13 devices brand Kerlink model iBTS
[8] with omnidirectional antennas, in different points of the
study region, as can be seen in Figure 1. These points were
selected looking for the best range for a densely built urban
area and areas with less obstruction of the signal. As a result,
III. STUDY CASE IOT LA PLATA - (SMART LIGHTING
TESTBED)
A. Challenge
The pilot of La Plata was raised as an experimental starting
point to face different problematics. In collaboration with a
local manufacturer of luminaires [9], engineering work was
carried out to provide communication and intelligence to a
luminous device for urban use.
In the first place, it aims to optimize the management of
street lighting in a city, proposing: reduction of the energy
consumption of public lighting, mainly used for streets,
avenues, highways, etc. Task optimization of maintenance
staff, instantly reporting the malfunction of a device (led
burned, lack of power, etc.) and its location. Allow
preventative maintenance of those luminaires that have an
abnormal operation and stretch the useful life of the led.
Management of scheduled jobs to attenuate the led light
intensity and help reducing light pollution: it is scientifically

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 2019 Sixth International Conference on Internet of Things: Systems, Management and Security (IOTSMS)
proven that excessive exposure to light at night has negative
connotations on human, plants and animal physiology, and
causes a great problem for astronomical activity at the
observation of the night sky [10].
Secondly, taking advantage of the deployed wireless
communications network and having computing nodes with
communication capacity installed in luminaires (implicitly
guaranteeing unlimited energy and protection against
vandalism), we worked on the integration of portable sensors
(low cost sensors) for the monitoring of certain critical
pollutants for the health of the population [11]. For the study
case, sensors were used to measure concentrations of
particulate matter in the air.
These sensors allow the construction of dense networks for
monitoring that will eventually provide air quality maps in real
time with high spatial and temporal resolution. The possibility
of acquiring small, inexpensive and portable devices, can
greatly improve the ability to characterize the concentrations
of particulate matter at different points and simultaneously
[12]. The potential of this type of IoT application is being
studied by different institutions specialized on air quality
issues such as [13] [14].
It should be considered that we are in an initial stage of the
development of most low cost sensors, which still do not
provide reliable data and need to be evaluated. In the market,
there are sensors with different degrees of precision and
studies carried out show that the measurements they generate
have a variable quality requiring calibration with reference
equipment [15].
B. Hardware Development
Telnetar MAGLUX 100 model was modified to
incorporate an MCU Adafruit Feather Lora32u4 with
embedded Lora radiofrequency chipset [16], together with a
humidity, temperature and particulate matter sensors (Nova
SDS011 PM2.5 / PM 10 sensor ). Sensing routines and
commands for interacting with the electronics of the luminaire
were implemented to turn on, off and dimerize (it uses the 0-
10V protocol). Both the control hardware, sensors and
communication radio, have been installed in the interior space
of the luminaire housing, and specific pieces had to be
designed for this model (Fig.3).
Fig. 3. Street lights.
This supposes a limitation at the moment of thinking an
easy adaptation to other models or manufacturers. One
possible solution would be to place part of the hardware in a
receptacle that complies with the 7-pin NEMA standard [17],
which provides a robust electrical interface between a
photocell and a luminaire, leaving 4 pins for extra control.
C. Embedded software
The MCU has an ATmega32u4 processor and a radio
communication Lora HopeRF RFM95/96W, programmable
in arduino environment. For the management of
communication routines, the LMIC library, originally
developed by IBM, was implemented [18].
Main loop routine lifts states of the luminaire and
communicates to the network, every regular configurable
intervals. After each transmission, the module open two
receive windows for listening features, waiting to receive
requests of commands sent from the application to be
executed (these may be operating commands, new
configuration settings or simply request of specific states).
This mode of operation (sending, then listening), is
established by the Lora Alliance standard in version 1.0.2 [l2]
for LoRaWAN Class A devices. Payloads example
configuration and signal behavior is listed in Table 1.
TABLE I.
Network performance resultsa
Payload length 14 bytes
Communication period Every 1 minute
SF (Spread Factor) :10
LoRa Parameters
BW (Bandwidth) : 125 kHz
Distance to Gateway 1: 2km
(1.24 miles)
Rssi: -115 dBm
SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio): -
9 dB
Gateways that received the
package
Distance to Gateway 2: 3,67
km (2.28 miles)
Rssi: -109 dBm
SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio): -
15 dB
a.
As an example, showing 1 packet sent by a node
6 (six) luminaries have been operating continuously since
February 2019 in the city of La Plata, transmitting their data
in real time every one minute: status (on, off, dimmerization),
humidity, temperature, PM2.5 and PM10 measurements.
From an initial analysis, the correlation between the sensors
are very good. (see Fig.4). But, correlation with a reference
method will have to be performed for a better understanding
of how the low cost sensors perform [15].
Fig. 4. Street sensors correlation (temperature and PM2.5).
For managing situations of lost network connection (drop
of several simultaneous gateways or network server failure),
the node maintains an internal clock and power-on schedule
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settings stored in non-volatile memory. In this way, in the
event of a network crash, it begins to operate in an offline
mode, managing, as indicated by its internal clock, the on and
off scheduled times. It is important to highlight that in the
proposed solution it is the network that manages the status on
and off. The nodes do not include a light sensor (LDR), so it
always depends on demand command to operate. For future
work, the possibility of adding a luminosity sensor, which
functions as an actuator in case of an offline situation, will be
considered.
IV. SOFTWARE PLATFORM
Considering an end-to-end IoT solution, it not only matters
how we collect and transmit the data, but also how that data
will travel through a cloud of services until it finally can be
consumed by our final application.
In the case of a LoRaWAN scheme, the core of the
network is the Network Server (NS). This will be responsible
for keys and secure management of the devices, as well as
acting as an intermediary for the round trip of information
between nodes and final application.
The NS will be managed by whoever deploys the network.
There are different alternatives in the market to mount an NS:
some OpenSource, such as the LoraServer project [19],
licensed platforms such as Orbiwise [20] or platforms already
mounted in the cloud with free or paid subscriptions, such as
the The Things Network site [21]. This project, also proposes
a collaborative structure of gateways, in order to be able to use
LoRaWAN nodes, without the need of having our own
gateway.
In all cases, the NS will provide an interface for integration
via MQTT or HTTP, with our application service. Conceptual
schema (Fig.5)
Fig. 5. Conceptual schema LoRaWAN Smart Lighthing solution.
In the technical proposals of the ITU, the challenge is to
move from a top-down scheme with solution providers with
closed schemes, to an open scheme with platforms that allow
a horizontal and integrated integration for the communities
[22].
Taking this as a premise a software platform was
developed, with the purpose of guaranteeing its scalability in
terms of quantity and diversity of nodes, compatibility with
multiple communication technologies and facilitating the
manipulation of the collected data.
The IoT Platform was designed to connect with different
communication technologies such LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, LTE,
WiFi, etc. Using a connector for each technology, we can
integrate several types of nodes, sensors, etc., with different
payload formats. Data received by each connector are
processed by the Core and saved into a database (Fig.6).
Fig. 6. Iot Platform. Software Layers.
Also it can connect with external services, for example a
weather service, to get information. Additionally, the core
could manage specific rules to handle events such alerts,
automatics actions, etc.
All the information is displayed by a frontend application
(web application or mobile app), where minimal required
functional items were implemented, such as:
x Process the information received from the luminaries
and store it in databases designed for a high volume of
data.
x Control panels for the remote operation of the
luminaires (on, off, dimerized, etc.).
x Master file of geolocated luminaires, including:
manufacturer, model, location, group / sector,
connected sensors, communications provider.
x Open API for data extraction and communication with
other subsystems.
x Algorithms to detect faults in real time (e.g.,
commands not executed).
V. CONCLUSIONS
The advance in the development of an IoT solution for
Smart Lighting were presented, using hardware and free
software environments, which allows the exchange of
information with a flexible and inexpensive implementation.
The test environment deployed in the field is operating end-
to-end. The sensed information is transmitted to a scalable
platform for IoT in the cloud, from where it can process the
set of received data, monitor the state of the equipment and
generate reports on demand, starting from the historical
storage of frames in a database designed for that purpose.
The LoRaWAN network demonstrate an optimum reach
in all the zones where it was decided to provide coverage,
resulting in the correct choice of this technology. In all cases,
the deployed nodes have coverage of at least 2 gateways,
demonstrating sufficient redundancy in this test stage. To
consider in a real scenario, with thousands of end devices, the
regular transmission times (uplinks) should be adjusted, since
it will be a key factor to guarantee the network scale, in terms
of quantity and quality of service.
Firmware updates in dense networks, with difficult -access
to nodes (such is the case of this work), is one of the most
important future work in Smart Cities and in the IoT world in
general. Changing requirements, errors or security
vulnerabilities are commonplace in software industry.
Designing a device with no possible updates is an unrealistic
policy. Lora Alliance have published new specifications of its
standard to support this issue in what they called FUOTA
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(firmware updates over the air). It would be highly
recommendable, when facing an IoT solution, to have the
Lora chipset that certify these requirements.
Electrical standards such as ANSI C136.41, will be very
useful when thinking about a solution for Smart Lighting,
especially when adapting already existing luminaires in the
streets. Otherwise, specific adaptations must be made for each
model and particular manufacturer, to integrate the necessary
components.
Low cost technologies for air quality monitoring, present
a huge potential for the assembly of air quality maps with high
spatial and temporal resolution. However, their current
limitations and considerations should be taken into account
when interpreting the collected data. Techniques for
calibration, humidity compensation, cabinet design in
outdoors environments and durability, are some of the aspects
to be analyzed for future deployments.
Finally, interaction between different stakeholders
(Government, University and Private sector) has been very
enriching, since it has been possible to apply knowledge about
communication networks and IoT protocols in a real case,
transferring academic knowledge to the local manufacturers,
promoting innovation and the development of new products
and services.
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