Ad-hoc network possibilities inside LoRaWAN

Sammanfattning: The Internet of Things (IOT) is a fast growing field with new actors constantly joining in. Locations such as farms or remote areas do not always have Internet coverage to access the IoT. This thesis looks at LoRaWAN as an IoT technology and ad-hoc networking to solve this problem. Existing ad-hoc routing protocols such as AODV, HWMP, and ZRP were studied. Based on the study they were evaluated as to how well they would fit into the LoRaWAN protocol. A simple solution based on HWMP and AODV was integrated with LoRaWAN. A testbed consisting of LoRaWAN devices was built to test the capabilities of the proposed solution. Receive windows of 2 seconds can be achieved with an ad-hoc LoRaWAN with a depth of 5-6 nodes. Successful routes dropped from 85% to 40% with a depth increase of 2 nodes. LoRaWANs 1% duty cycle limit can be broken with bigger networks. The thesis concludes that ad-hoc LoRaWAN based on HWMP and AODV might be possible given further research. The networks can be used to cover large remote areas with no Internet connection.