Design of a robust, low-power gateway for LoRa Mesh Networks

With the escalating demand for sustainability and climate monitoring, LoRa mesh networks have proven instrumental in large-scale environmental monitoring. Serving as the final link in a mesh network, gateways play a critical role by gathering measurements from each sensor and transmitting them to the internet. The performance of gateways is crucial to the efficacy of any LoRa mesh networks. However, existing literature has offered scant attention to the design and evaluation of gateways within the context of LoRa mesh networks.
This project seeks to develop a gateway capable of handling high-volume traffic from a minimum of 100 sensor nodes in a mesh network, ensuring scalability and reliability. Furthermore, the emphasis is placed on achieving a year-long battery life using only two AA batteries. The successful development of such a gateway holds the potential to significantly enhance the efficiency and scalability of LoRa mesh networks. This, in turn, will contribute to advancing sustainable practices and supporting long-term climate monitoring initiatives. The proposed timeline spans four months, encompassing literature review, design planning, hardware and firmware development, testing, and documentation. The project will use the CottonCandy protocol from recent literature as the underlying LoRa mesh network.

Faculty Supervisor:

Amy Bilton

Student:

Partner:

Spero Analytics

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Manufacturing; Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Toronto

Program: