LoRa support for long-range real-time inter-cluster communications over Bluetooth Low Energy industrial networks

Industrial monitoring and control applications typically require real-time communications between a large number of nodes distributed over the plant. For the sake of network manageability and to reduce the overall network workload, wireless nodes are organized in clusters, which typically encompass neighboring nodes that frequently exchange data with each other. However, different clusters also cooperate to realize distributed applications and this raises the need for enabling communications between multiple clusters spread over large areas in the plant. This paper presents LoRaBLE, a long-range communication protocol that leverages the Long Range (LoRa) technology to provide inter-cluster communications over Bluetooth Low Energy networks with bounded delays, so as to meet the time constraints of real-time industrial traffic flows. The paper presents the design of LoRaBLE and a proof-of-concept implementation on a lab testbed made up of commercial-off-the-shelf devices.