Zilia Brazil started studies on LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) from a plan for business diversification in Brazil, proposing the development of an IoT communication module. Zilia’s IoT products are the basis for several applications, such as systems for measuring water and gas consumption, asset and material tracking, control of building utilities, and measurement of environmental and soil characteristics.
The applications with LoRaWAN are starting to show evidence in the national market and getting popular in segments such as agribusiness, hospital, logistics, and applications for smart cities due to their technical characteristics that enable high coverage and low power consumption. In this aspect, software updates in the field have become a requirement for most applications. However, due to various operational constraints, this functionality is hard to achieve in LPWAN networks.
Challenge on firmware update in LPWAN networks.
LPWAN is idealized for a range of applications, such as basic premises low data transmission rate, low mobility, high latency, low power consumption, broad coverage, and device density.
These networks are called Massive IoT (Internet Of Things) because of the large number of connected devices. Sigfox® pioneered this technology, with water and gas consumption metering devices as the basis of its applications.
In general, LPWAN devices use a primary battery and have a low processing ability precisely to make it possible to extract a longer operating time from the battery, increasing the life of the device where external power supply can be a problem.
Due to these restrictions, many functionalities used in large networks (cellular, Wi-Fi®, ZigBee®, WiSUN®, etc) are hindered. It isn’t possible to transmit images, voices, or large amounts of data precisely because of the type of technology applied in this contextualization, and firmware updates are hard to be done. Firmware updates are significant for three main reasons: functional suitability and correction of errors detected when using the device in the field, new requirements presented by the customer, and cybersecurity corrections required by the technology that has evolved with the maturity of networks, aiming to reduce the vulnerabilities that these devices are exposed.
To make firmware update possible the infrastructure needs preparation to deliver this to the client. In the case of Sigfox® network these updates are not possible, LoRaWAN® updates are not usual but can be implemented, on Cat-M and NB-IoT is commonly offered by the operators.
In the case of the LoRaWAN® protocol, managed by the LoRa Alliance® organization, it was recently recognized as an international standard by the ITU (ITU-T Recommendation Y.4480), and the specifications include documents that detail the software update process through a process called FUOTA (Firmware Update Over The Air).
Security in Information Systems
Information Systems Security is a vehemently addressed topic in discussions about IoT technology and is highly important for network and user security. For IoT systems, the core security rule is the IoT Security Assurance Framework (known as Framework) from the IoT Security Foundation®. It is an extensive questionnaire, involving fourteen areas, one of which is about Device Software.
This framework admits that there are systems where software upgrade is impossible, as is the case with Sigfox®, but for those who allow as is the case with LoRaWAN®, several requirements are mandatory for all classes of devices.
Zilia has put considerable effort and dedicated staff into understanding the details of the functionality and constraints for using the FUOTA process in LoRaWAN networks and more information will follow soon.
