SDR-based gateway for IoT and M2M applications

Abstract

Affordable low-power, short-range terrestrial communications are the current enabler for Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine to Machine (M2M) applications. Their main drawback resides in the need of a gateway that enables them to communicate with the world. Satellite gateways have become in the recent years more affordable, but nevertheless, the combined equipment and access costs are still prohibitive for large scale deployments of satellite applications. The goal of this paper is to describe a fully functional prototype for a low-cost satellite gateway based on an embedded Software Defined Radio (SDR) platform. The developed prototype, implemented as a standalone RF platform, will be able to route data between the satellite and M2M/IoT applications, covering on the terrestrial side the most common shortrange wireless protocols and standards (802.11b/g/n, ZigBee, BLE, etc.). The satellite link will be assured by adapting typical lightweight uplink and downlink protocols, already implemented and tested. This paper is focused on the terrestrial side implementation and experimental results.