research-article

Design of a Robust MAC Protocol for LoRa

Authors:

Absar-Ul-Haque Ahmar,

Thien Duc Nguyen,

Danny HughesAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Internet of Things, Volume 4, Issue 1

Article No.: 3, Pages 1 - 25

https://doi.org/10.1145/3557048

Published: 23 February 2023 Publication History

Abstract

Low-power wide-area networks enable large-scale deployments of low-power wireless devices. LoRaWAN is a long-range wireless technology that has emerged as a low-power and low data rate solution to support Internet of Things applications. Although LoRaWAN provides a low-power and cost-efficient networking solution, recent literature shows that it performs poorly in terms of reliability and security in dense deployments due to the uncoordinated (ALOHA-based) nature of the MAC (medium access control) protocol. Furthermore, LoRaWAN is not robust against selective jamming attacks. This article proposes CRAM: a time-synchronized cryptographic frequency hopping MAC protocol designed for the LoRa physical layer. CRAM reduces the contention by fairly exploiting the available frequency space and maximizes the entropy of the channel hopping algorithm. We develop a large physical testbed and a simulator to thoroughly evaluate the proposed protocol. Our evaluations show that CRAM significantly improves reliability and scalability and increases channel utilization while making selective jamming difficult to perform compared to the standard LoRaWAN protocol.

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Cited By

Maurya PHazra AKumari PSørensen TDas S(2025)A Comprehensive Survey of Data-Driven Solutions for LoRaWAN: Challenges and Future DirectionsACM Transactions on Internet of Things10.1145/37119536:1(1-36)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3711953
Yu SXia XZhang ZHou NZheng YShu YLiu JTan RHe YChen J(2024)FDLoRa: Tackling Downlink-Uplink Asymmetry with Full-duplex LoRa GatewaysProceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems10.1145/3666025.3699338(281-294)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3666025.3699338
Meng QWang HZhang CSong YLi SLu LZhu HShu YLiu JTan RHe YChen J(2024)Processor-Sharing Internet of Things Architecture for Large-scale DeploymentProceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems10.1145/3666025.3699333(211-224)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3666025.3699333
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Design of a Robust MAC Protocol for LoRa
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Dependable and fault-tolerant systems and networks
    1. Redundancy
  2. Embedded and cyber-physical systems
    1. Embedded systems
    2. Robotics
2. Networks
  1. Network properties
    1. Network reliability

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Internet of Things

ACM Transactions on Internet of Things Volume 4, Issue 1

February 2023

226 pages

EISSN:2577-6207

DOI:10.1145/3582892

Editors:
Schahram Dustdar
TU Wien, Austria
,
Gian Pietro Picco
University of Trento, Italy

Issue’s Table of Contents

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Journal Family

ACM Journals for the Design of Smart and Connected Systems

Publication History

Published: 23 February 2023

Online AM: 16 September 2022

Accepted: 05 August 2022

Revised: 14 July 2022

Received: 26 May 2021

Published in TIOT Volume 4, Issue 1

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Cited By

Maurya PHazra AKumari PSørensen TDas S(2025)A Comprehensive Survey of Data-Driven Solutions for LoRaWAN: Challenges and Future DirectionsACM Transactions on Internet of Things10.1145/37119536:1(1-36)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3711953
Yu SXia XZhang ZHou NZheng YShu YLiu JTan RHe YChen J(2024)FDLoRa: Tackling Downlink-Uplink Asymmetry with Full-duplex LoRa GatewaysProceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems10.1145/3666025.3699338(281-294)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3666025.3699338
Meng QWang HZhang CSong YLi SLu LZhu HShu YLiu JTan RHe YChen J(2024)Processor-Sharing Internet of Things Architecture for Large-scale DeploymentProceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems10.1145/3666025.3699333(211-224)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3666025.3699333
Zheng XLi RWang YLiu LMa H(2024)PolarScheduler: Dynamic Transmission Control for Floating LoRa NetworksACM Transactions on Sensor Networks10.1145/365285620:3(1-33)Online publication date: 23-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3652856
Chaturvedi AAgarwal RGoyal S(2024)A Review for Increasing the Network Performance by Eliminating the Effect of Jamming Attack in Mobile Ad-Hoc Network2024 IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Signal Processing and Effective Communication Technologies (INSPECT)10.1109/INSPECT63485.2024.10896135(1-6)Online publication date: 7-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/INSPECT63485.2024.10896135
Alipio MBures M(2024)Current testing and performance evaluation methodologies of LoRa and LoRaWAN in IoT applications: Classification, issues, and future directivesInternet of Things10.1016/j.iot.2023.10105325(101053)Online publication date: Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iot.2023.101053
González-Palacio MGonzalez-Palacio LSepúlveda-Cano LGómez-Álvarez M(2024)Advanced Traffic Differentiation in LoRaWAN IIoT Networks Through Contention Window StrategiesAdvances in Computing10.1007/978-3-031-75236-0_21(293-307)Online publication date: 22-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-75236-0_21
Lara AGuillén EReales WLopez L(2023)Enhancing LoRa Communication: A Comprehensive Review of Improvement Techniques2023 7th International Conference on System Reliability and Safety (ICSRS)10.1109/ICSRS59833.2023.10381139(507-512)Online publication date: 22-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSRS59833.2023.10381139

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