Cooperative Transmission of Large Files Over LoRa in Multimedia loT Networks

Multimedia Internet of Things (MIoT) devices are often deployed in remote places where diverse data, such as images and videos, must be efficiently transmitted over long-range, low-power wireless networks. Low-Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) have emerged as a good solution in transmitting tiny pieces of information, but not in the context of MIoT due to the low data rate of such technologies. In this paper, we study the problem of employing long-range and low data rate devices collocated in a small area to cooperatively transmit multimedia data. Our study considers the LoRa radio technology as a suitable solution for this purpose due to the low cost, high configurability, and adhoc nature of deployments. However, since LoRa is generally designed for small payload applications, our aim is to propose a novel approach to handle high-volume data transmissions allowing cooperative transmissions of multimedia data by exploiting neighboring devices. An algorithm is proposed to distribute the captured data based on the capabilities and char-acteristics of the neighboring devices. The proposed approach is implemented on a testbed and the results show significant improvement in terms of data collection time compared to an approach which evenly divides the data among neighbors.