Wi-Lo: Emulating LoRa using COTS WiFi

TL;DR

Wi-Lo enables existing WiFi access points to emulate LoRa communications for IoT devices through software updates, allowing long-range, low-power IoT connectivity without additional hardware.

Contribution

Wi-Lo introduces a software-only method to emulate LoRa signals using WiFi hardware, bridging WiFi and LoRa networks without extra devices.

Findings

Enables WiFi devices to communicate with LoRa IoT devices over long distances

Achieves comparable range performance to dedicated LoRa transmitters

Requires only a software update to existing WiFi hardware

Abstract

We present Wi-Lo, which allows to convert an ordinary 802.11 (WiFi) access point into an internet of things (IoT) gateway supporting the low-power wide area network (LPWAN) technology LoRa in the downlink. Our Wi-Lo system only requires a software update and no additional hardware. It uses signal emulation technique based on complementary code keying modulation from 802.11b in order to emulate a downlink LoRa (long range) transmission. The Wi-Lo gateway can be used by a normal WiFi-enabled smartphone to send packets to LoRa compliant IoT devices like smart sensors. We implemented a prototype using commodity WiFi hardware. Experimental results show that Wi-Lo enables a normal WiFi node to communication to LoRa devices even over long distances, which is comparable to the configurations using pure LoRa transmitter and receivers.