Firmware Updates over the Air via LoRa: Unicast and Broadcast Combination for Boosting Update Speed

Area of Science:

• Electrical Engineering
• Computer Science
• Embedded Systems

Background:

• Firmware updates are critical for Internet of Things (IoT) device lifecycle management.
• Updating devices in challenging environments like ATEX zones requires robust wireless solutions.
• Existing methods may not efficiently address the time constraints for large-scale deployments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine the optimal wireless (Over The Air, OTA) firmware update strategy for low-end IoT nodes.
• To minimize the total project update time for intelligent lighting systems in potentially explosive atmospheres.
• To analyze and compare methods combining unicast and broadcast communications for efficient firmware delivery.

Main Methods:

• Analytical exploration of three distinct unicast and broadcast transmission combinations.
• Extensive simulations varying scenario size, firmware chunk size, node count, and broadcast rounds.
• Hardware implementation and lab experiments of a proposed broadcast-centric method.

Main Results:

• Significant reductions in firmware update time are achievable, up to two orders of magnitude for numerous nodes.
• Broadcast approaches offer advantages due to constant transmission rates, especially for numerous devices.
• Regulatory airtime consumption limits impact overall update duration.

Conclusions:

• The choice of update method critically impacts project completion time for IoT deployments.
• Broadcast-based strategies are highly effective for large-scale IoT firmware updates, outperforming unicast.
• Maintaining identical firmware versions across nodes is crucial for efficient broadcast update control.