UAV and Satellite Employment for the Internet of Things Use Case

Since the previous decades, the Internet of Things (IoT) is capturing a major interest and making critical changes in our life. It has been established in different sectors all over the world such as health-care, agricultural, logistics, etc. Long range transmissions and low energy consumption are two main features that IoT communication protocols should accomplish from a communication viewpoint. This led to the definition and deployment of a plethora of commercial or standardized solutions within the Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) category. From an architectural viewpoint, solutions to extend current network coverage are needed to allow IoT employment in all possible use cases. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have witnessed exceptional growth and high demand in the IoT area. Besides, extending the number of supported devices and link capacity in urban areas and extending the coverage in rural and remote areas through satellite communication networks is envisioned as an improvement of the overall network infrastructure within the fifth generation of mobile communication (5G) framework. This paper presents a study of deploying an IoT communication protocol (LoRaWAN) gateway onboard a UAV communicating with the terrestrial network through a simulated satellite link. The aim of the study is to propose and test UAVs together with satellites as possible means to, on one hand, extend the coverage of LoRa network, and, on the other hand, offer a common solution to allow data exchange with multiple devices implementing different IoT communication protocols.