Over-the-Air Firmware Update in LoRaWAN Networks: A New Module-based Approach

Overview & Synopsis

Over the last years, a huge number of things has been connected to the Internet to support applications for smart cities, smart industries, smart agriculture and smart environment, etc. In order to fix bugs, update features or perform dynamic adaptations on these things, efficient Firmware Update Over the Air (FUOTA) methods are required. In this paper, we propose a modular-based approach for the development of firmware of MCU-based IoT devices, and a new FUOTA method for devices communicating using LoRaWAN. This method enables partial and dynamic updates of modules forming the device firmware, and does not require a system reboot to apply these updates. This approach and this method have been implemented on STM32 MCUs. The experimental results show good performance in terms of update size and network traffic compared to the traditional FUOTA method and monolithic-based firmware development approach, which both impose full firmware updates.