Device for relaying LoRaWAN messages

With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), several communication technologies have emerged to exchange information between devices. IoT is being used in transportation, industry, and home automation. In agriculture, this contribution is also present due to the search for better quality, higher productivity, and less use of agrochemicals. Security, installation, and reliability are becoming more important in wireless communications, thus emerging the LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network). With great potential for applicability in agriculture, LPWAN technologies, such as LoRa and its LoRaWAN protocol, are increasingly used. Some limits of this technology, such as the non-availability of hops between devices, awaken the need for a device to fill this lacuna. This paper presents the development of a low-cost and transparent device for LoRaWAN networks capable of relaying messages over multiple hops, thus increasing the range of the network. Three case studies were performed with the developed repeater devices. In the first study, the behavior of the repeater device with respect to retransmitting downlink and uplink messages was analyzed. Due to collisions and message loss, a new study was performed. Two repeaters performed different functions in a message relaying, thus leading to a more effective packet delivery rate. The last case study consisted of a network with multiple hops. After the case studies were performed, it was possible to relay messages transparently over multiple hops.