techblog/lpwan-sim repository overview

⁠LWN Simulator

A LoRaWAN nodes' simulator to simulate a LoRaWAN Network.

⁠Table of Contents

• General Info⁠
• Requirements⁠
• Installation⁠

⁠General Info

LWN Simulator is a LoRaWAN nodes' simulator equipped with web interface. It allows to comunicate with a real infrastructure LoRaWAN or ad-hoc infrastructure, such as Chirpstack⁠.

The project consists of three main components: devices, forwarder and gateways.

⁠The device

• Based specification LoRaWAN v1.0.3⁠;
• Supports all LoRaWAN Regional Parameters v1.0.3⁠.
• Implements class A,C and partially even the B class;
• Implements ADR Algorithm;
• Sends periodically a frame that including some configurable payload;
• Supports MAC Command;
• Implements FPending procedure;
• It is possibile to interact with it in real-time;

⁠The forwarder

It receives the frames from devices, creates a RXPK object including them within and forwards to gateways.

⁠The gateway

There are two types of gateway:

• A virtual gateway that communicates with a real gateway bridge (if it exists);
• A real gateway to which datagrams UDP are forwarded.

⁠Requirements

• If you don't have a real infrastructure, you can download ChirpStack open-source LoRaWAN® Network Server⁠, or a similar software, to prove it;

⁠Installation

⁠From binary file

You can download from releases section the pre-compiled binary file.

Releases Page⁠

⁠From source code

⁠Requirements

The simulator is written in Go, so you must have installed Go on your machine.

• You must install Go⁠. Version >= 1.21

⁠Build Steps

Firstly, you must clone this repository:

git clone https://github.com/UniCT-ARSLab/LWN-Simulator.git

After the download, you must enter in main directory:

cd LWN-Simulator

You must install all dependencies to build the simulator:

make install-dep

Now you can launch the build of the simulator:

make build

The binary file will be created in the bin directory.

⁠Run the simulator

To run the simulator, you can:

• Run from the built binary file:

./bin/lwnsimulator // for Linux
./bin/lwnsimulator.exe // for Windows

make run-release // if you use makefile

• Run from the source code:

make run

⁠Configuration file

The simulator depends on a configuration file (config.json) which specifies some configurations for the simulator:

{
  "address": "0.0.0.0",
  "port": 8000,
  "metricsPort": 8001,
  "configDirname": "lwnsimulator",
  "autoStart": false,
  "verbose": false
}

• address: the address where the simulator will listen for incoming connections;
• port: the port where the simulator will listen for incoming connections;
• metricsPort: the port where the simulator will listen for incoming connections for metrics (Prometheus);
• configDirname: the directory where the simulator will store the configuration files;
• autoStart: if true, the simulator will start automatically the simulation;
• verbose: if true, the simulator will print more logs.

⁠Tutorials

More coming soon...

⁠Arabic (thanks to IdealBit⁠)

How to Install on Linux or WLS⁠

How to Install on Windows⁠

How to use LWN Simulator with ChirpStack⁠

⁠Publications and Citations

• LWN Simulator-A LoRaWAN Network Simulator⁠
• Lightweight Root Key Management Scheme in Smart Grid IoT Network based on Blockchain Technology⁠
• Optimizing LoRa for Edge Computing with TinyML Pipeline for Channel Hopping⁠
• Compute Continuum in Bioengineering: Enhanced Motion Capture and Real-Time Data Processing on Cloud-Edge Infrastructures⁠
• ChirpPark: A Smart and Sustainable Parking System Protocol for Smart Cities and Multi-Agent Vehicles⁠