Incremental firmware update over-the-air for low-power IoT devices over LoRaWAN

IF 7.6 3区 计算机科学 Q1 COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Andrea De Simone, Giovanna Turvani, Fabrizio Riente
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Remote firmware updates in Internet of Things (IoT) devices remain a major challenge due to the constraints of many IoT communication protocols. In particular, transmitting full firmware images over low-bandwidth links such as Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) is often impractical. Existing techniques, such as firmware partitioning, can alleviate the problem but are often insufficient, especially for battery-powered devices where time and energy are critical constraints. Consequently, physical maintenance is still frequently required, which is costly and impractical in large-scale deployments. In this work, we introduce bpatch, a lightweight method for generating highly compact delta patches that enable on-device firmware reconstruction. The algorithm is explicitly designed for low-power devices, minimizing memory requirements and computational overhead during the update process. We evaluate bpatch on 173 firmware images across three architectures. Results show that it reduces update payloads by up to 39,000×for near-identical updates and by 9–18×for typical minor revisions, eliminating the need to transmit full firmware images. Experimental results further demonstrate significant time and energy savings, with performance comparable to more complex alternatives. bpatch is released as open-source and, although demonstrated on LoRaWAN, the approach is flexible and can be adapted to other IoT communication technologies.

Abstract Image

通过LoRaWAN进行低功耗物联网设备的无线增量固件更新
由于许多物联网通信协议的限制,物联网(IoT)设备的远程固件更新仍然是一个主要挑战。特别是,通过低带宽链路(如长距离广域网(LoRaWAN))传输完整的固件映像通常是不切实际的。现有的技术,如固件分区,可以缓解这个问题,但往往是不够的,特别是对于时间和能量是关键限制的电池供电设备。因此,仍然经常需要物理维护,这在大规模部署中既昂贵又不切实际。在这项工作中,我们介绍了bpatch,这是一种轻量级方法,用于生成高度紧凑的增量补丁,支持设备上固件重建。该算法明确为低功耗设备设计,在更新过程中最大限度地减少内存需求和计算开销。我们在三种架构的173个固件映像上评估了bpatch。结果表明,它通过39,000×for几乎相同的更新和9-18×for典型的小修订减少了更新有效载荷,消除了传输完整固件映像的需要。实验结果进一步证明了显著的时间和能源节约,性能可与更复杂的替代方案相媲美。bpatch作为开源发布,虽然在LoRaWAN上进行了演示,但该方法很灵活,可以适应其他物联网通信技术。
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来源期刊
Internet of Things
Internet of Things Multiple-
CiteScore
3.60
自引率
5.10%
发文量
115
审稿时长
37 days
期刊介绍: Internet of Things; Engineering Cyber Physical Human Systems is a comprehensive journal encouraging cross collaboration between researchers, engineers and practitioners in the field of IoT & Cyber Physical Human Systems. The journal offers a unique platform to exchange scientific information on the entire breadth of technology, science, and societal applications of the IoT. The journal will place a high priority on timely publication, and provide a home for high quality. Furthermore, IOT is interested in publishing topical Special Issues on any aspect of IOT.
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