XGate : scaling LoRa communications to massive logical channels

Abstract

LoRa is a promising technology that provides widespread low-power IoT connectivity. With its capabilities for multi-channel communication, orthogonal transmission, and spectrum sharing, LoRaWAN is poised to connect millions of IoT devices across thousands of logical channels. However, current LoRa gateways rely on hardwired Rx chains that cover less than 1% of these channels, restricting the potential for large-scale LoRa communications. This paper introduces XGate, a groundbreaking gateway design that uses a single Rx chain to simultaneously receive packets from all logical channels, enabling scalable LoRa transmission and flexible network access. Unlike the hardwired Rx chains in existing gateway designs, XGate dynamically allocates resources, including software-controlled Rx chains and demodulators, based on the extracted meta-information of incoming packets. XGate overcomes several challenges to efficiently detect incoming packets without prior knowledge of their parameter configurations. Evaluations demonstrate that XGate enhances LoRa concurrent transmissions by 8.4× compared to state-of-the-art solutions.