Middleware for Distributed Applications in a LoRa Mesh Network

Recently, LoRa mesh networks have gained an increasing interest as a communication layer for sending data between IoT nodes. However, the network service of the firmware on the microcontroller-based nodes is typically limited to sending and receiving LoRa packets through the LoRa radio. Therefore, the packet processing by the node has to be done using an application-specific implementation. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a middleware that facilitates the development and operation of multiple distributed applications on LoRa mesh network nodes. The components we propose leverage the routing capacity of a LoRa mesh network enabled by the LoRaMesher library and provide a service for applications to send and receive messages from each other. Running several applications concurrently is also supported. We experiment with the middleware implemented in the node firmware with distributed applications that span from the LoRa mesh network to the Internet over MQTT. Our results show the support of bidirectional application-level communication, which can be used to build cross-network distributed applications that integrate services on LoRa mesh network nodes.