Firmware over-the-air programming techniques for IoT networks -- A survey

TL;DR

This survey reviews over-the-air firmware update techniques for IoT networks, discussing challenges, approaches, security schemes, and existing platforms to improve reliability and security in resource-constrained environments.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of OTAP methods, challenges, security solutions, and a catalog of current open-source and commercial platforms for IoT firmware updates.

Findings

Identifies key challenges in IoT OTAP, including resource constraints and heterogeneity.

Analyzes various approaches for secure and reliable firmware updates.

Lists state-of-the-art platforms supporting IoT OTAP.

Abstract

The devices forming the Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks need to be re-programmed over-the-air, so that new features are added, software bugs or security vulnerabilities are resolved and their applications can be re-purposed. The limitations of IoT devices, such as installation in locations with limited physical access, resource-constraint nature, large scale and high heterogeneity, should be taken into consideration for designing an efficient and reliable pipeline for over-the-air programming (OTAP). In this work, we present a survey of OTAP techniques, which can be applied to IoT networks. We highlight the main challenges and limitations of OTAP for IoT devices and analyse the essential steps of firmware update process, along with different approaches and techniques that implement them. In addition, we discuss schemes that focus on securing the OTAP process. Finally, we present a collection of state-of-the art open-source and commercial platforms that integrate secure and reliable OTAP.