Firmware Update Using Multiple Gateways in LoRaWAN Networks

The remarkable evolution of the IoT raised the need for an efficient way to update the device’s firmware. Recently, a new process was released summarizing the steps for firmware updates over the air (FUOTA) on top of the LoRaWAN protocol. The FUOTA process needs to be completed quickly to reduce the systems’ interruption and, at the same time, to update the maximum number of devices with the lowest power consumption. However, as the literature showed, a single gateway cannot optimize the FUOTA procedure and offer the above mentioned goals since various trade-offs arise. In this paper, we conducted extensive experiments via simulation to investigate the impact of multiple gateways during the firmware update process. To achieve that, we extended the FUOTAsim simulation tool to support multiple gateways. The results revealed that several gateways could eliminate the trade-offs that appeared using a single gateway.