Network Design and Performance Evaluation of MQTT

Based HetNet Using LoRa Network and IEEE 802.11

for Internet of Things
Amin Suharjono1, Roni Apriantoro2, Muhammad Mukhlisin3, Muhammad Anif4, Sidiq Syamsul Hidayat5, Thomas Agung Setiawan6, Sri
Anggraeni Kadiran7
1,2,4,5,6,7Dept. of Electrical Engineering

3Dept. of Civil Engineering

1,2,3,4,5,6,7Politeknik Negeri Semarang
1,2,3,4,5,6,7Semarang, Indonesia
1amin.suharjono@gmail.com, 2roni.apriantoro28@gmail.com, 3mmukhlis2@gmail.com, 4muhammad.anif@polines.ac.id,
5sidiqsh@gmail.com, 6thomas.agung@polines.ac.id, 7rinikadiran67@yahoo.co.id

Abstract— Internet of Things is a future networks
development trend that is used in many aspects of our daily
activities. Internet of Things applications in the Rural area
quite difficult because the area has a high latency on the mobile
internet network and it is difficult to find an electricity source.
In addition, the installation of sensors at many points it will
take a lot of costs if each node is given their own internet
connection. Therefore, the wireless heterogeneous networks
(HetNet) is suitable to be applied to the Internet of Things
system in Rural areas with an optimal use approach of the
advantages possessed by LoRa, IEEE 802.11 and MQTT
protocol at the application layer. LoRa Networks is a network
segment with a low data rate and low power consumption that
is used as a sensor network, while WLAN is used as the
backbone network for link aggregation of LoRa Network. The
experimental results have shown that the network has a delay
of 66.25 ms and packet loss of 4% for the use of three nodes
with 15 sensors.
Keywords—Heterogeneous Wireless Network, LoRa, MQTT,
WLAN, Internet of Things.
I. INTRODUCTION
Internet of Things is a vision to connect all the smart
devices in order to interact and exchange data smoothly
which in its application requires a basic technology platform
consisting of a Physical layer and Data-link layer to continue
transmitting data over an IP-based network or Internet [1].
Internet of Things offers the Smart Things concept, i.e.
every electronic device such as household appliances,
medical equipment, natural disaster mitigation equipment,
etc. is connected to the internet so that monitoring and
management can be done easily and not affected by space
and time, so that every individual need can be done quickly
and efficiently.
Internet of Things in its application can identify, track,
monitor objects, trigger an event and provide real-time
automatic notifications [2]. One of the most vital applications
is in the medical, security and natural disaster mitigation
fields.
The role of data transmission technology and network
protocols used in communication networks is very vital to
reduce failures in the data transmission process. The level of
availability, reliability, and flexibility in the communication
network is needed to support the convenience offered by the
Internet of Things technology for Machine-to-Machine
communications.
Cellular networks are often used in these technologies
because of the flexibility offered. However, the weakness of
this network is the considerable level of unreliability, which
reflects the high latency in data transmission, especially in
mountainous areas and rural areas with the level of
availability of connectivity that is volatile and tends to be
unstable.
If real-time monitoring equipment is needed which
requires the movement of sensors to do mapping or other
applications related to mapping, of course, it will be a
problem if done in areas with cellular internet network
coverage that is unstable with high latency. It can cause
many packets to be expired before reaching the server.
Therefore we need a protocol that is able to work optimally
on an unreliable network with sufficiently high latency, so as
to guarantee data transmission
Therefore, we need a monitoring technology that is
reliable and has good efficiency in energy costs and
consumption. The design of heterogeneous wireless
networks (HetNet) uses the MQTT protocol, LoRa Networks
and IEEE 802.11 (WLAN) which are quite well applied to
real-time monitoring systems in Rural areas.
Heterogeneous Network (HetNet) is a network that
connects computers and other devices (sensor nodes) with
different operating systems and/or protocols. Heterogeneous
Network is also used in wireless networks that use different
access technologies, such as wireless networks that provide
services through WLANs and are able to maintain services
when switching to cellular networks, this is what is then
called the Heterogeneous Wireless Network [3] [4].
Long Range (LoRa) is part of Semtech's proprietary
spread spectrum modulation, which is a LoRa modulation
technique that uses physical layers to communicate
wirelessly under the LoRa Alliance standard. The advantages
of the LoRa modulation technique compared to other
modulation techniques are the use of the Chirp Spread
Spectrum (CSS) technique, resistance to interference and a
very low minimum Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) on the
receiving side, so that the receiver can demodulate the signal
properly. Chirp signal has a linear frequency pulse that is
modulated on wideband, which frequency pulses vary based
on the information encoded. This can improve the sensitivity
of the receiver by making equal timing and offset frequencies
on the transmitter and receiver sides and reduce interference
due to the Doppler effect [5].

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Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is a can be configured to be able to map the LoRa frame format
communication protocol that runs on TCP/IP stack, designed to the MQTT topic. Messages within the broker are
for Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication, open distinguished and filtered using topics where each message
sources and lightweight, has a low protocol overhead sent to the broker is tagged or bookmarked by the publisher
(minimum 2 bytes) so that it affects the low power to distinguish each data [9].
consumption and able to work on high latency and small
bandwidth [6].
Research related to network development for Internet of
Things applications is carried out by [1] with the title
Design and Deployment of MQTT Based HetNet Using
IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11 for the Internet of Things.
The study aims to develop a heterogeneous wireless network
to optimize the benefits of IEEE 802.15.4 (LR-WPAN) and
IEEE 802.11 (WLAN) networks. Raspberry Pi is used as a
gateway that bridges communication between LR-WPAN
and WLAN networks. The LR-WPAN network is used as
anodes sensor with low energy and low data-rate
specifications, while the WLAN network is used as a
backbone connected to the cloud for link aggregation from
Fig. 1. Energy efficiency techniques in the OSI Layer
the LR-WPAN network. The MQTT protocol is also added
to this network to support reliability and low energy
networks design. But, in this study has a weakness in sensor
networks and gateways that are only able to communicate at
a maximum distance of 100 meters.

In this paper we are developing to create a lower cost

gateway that has a range of distances between sensor nodes
and coordinators over 100 meters and to propose designs
and evaluate the performance of heterogeneous wireless
networks using LoRa Networks and WLAN based on the
value of delay and packet loss at the level QOS 0 on the
MQTT protocol.

II. METHODOLOGY Fig. 2. Heterogeneous wireless network design

A. Network Design
The heterogeneous wireless network is designed using
IEEE 802.11 (WLAN) and LoRa Networks standards which
WLAN is used as a backbone network to connect the LoRa
Network to the internet network. WLAN has a larger payload
size compared to LoRa. The maximum payload size on
WLAN is 2312 bytes per frame larger than LoRa which is
only 250 bytes per frame. This can give a statement that
LoRa can only be used on networks with a low data rate. The
effect of using a low data rate is low energy consumption
with a far range [8].
Meanwhile, the use of WLAN as a backbone is based on
specifications and performance that is capable of transporting
data with large payloads. In addition, WLAN also has a wide
bandwidth, high data rate, and a long distance wireless range.
However, this has an impact on the amount of energy
consumption.
The heterogeneous wireless network in this paper is
designed to combine networks with 2.4 GHz frequency on
WLAN and networks with 915 MHz frequency in LoRa
where both networks are not compatible on radio channels,
bandwidth, modulation schemes and frame formats. To
combine it, a gateway device that is designed as a bridge is
needed. Gateway consists of a microcontroller device that is
serially connected with LoRa Bee as a radio transceiver
device as well as a LoRa coordinator. The gateway module Fig. 3. Flowchart of gateway

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MQTT is a type of data-agnostic protocol, which the data
that is capable of being transmitted is not limited to certain
types, but all types of data can be transmitted such as binary,
text, XML or JSON [9].
MQTT works on the TCP/IP stack at the application
layer level on the OSI system standard [9]. This protocol
applies data compression and data reduction techniques to
perform energy efficiency [9][7]. It can be seen in Figure 1
[7].
The MQTT protocol in this paper is implemented on two
network technologies namely LoRa Networks and IEEE
802.11. Figure 2 is an explanation of the sequence of data
encapsulation in different Protocol Data Units (PDUs).
Nodes sensors that use the LoRa module are physically
connected to the sensor doing data encapsulation on the
LoRa frame.
All data in the LoRa Network is forwarded to the LoRa
Coordinator that is connected to the gateway. The software
module on the gateway is embedded in the NodeMCU. It
will capture the LoRa frame, then extract the sensor data
from the LoRa payload. Then the sensor data is encapsulated
into MQTT Payload.
Before the data is sent to the Cloud MQTT Broker,
MQTT Payload is encapsulated into TCP Segment. TCP
Segment is then encapsulated on IP Datagram, then
encapsulated again into IEEE 802.11 frames. After that, the
data is transmitted via the internet and decapsulated by
MQTT Brokers to store data in the cloud database. Flowchart
how the gateway works can be seen in Figure 3.
B. Testing Method
In this paper, we use a test method to calculate packet
data on an actual LTE public cellular network to analyze the
delay and packet loss sent from the gateway to MQTT
Brokers based on data from nodes. In this study, our server
from Mydevices (cayenne.mydevices.com) is used as the
Cloud MQTT Broker. Meanwhile, we use Wireshark to
capture packets sent by MQTT on QOS 0 via the LTE public
cellular network.
We analyze packet loss and delay by capturing packets
between the gateway and MQTT Broker for five minutes.
Delay is calculated based on the average roundtrip delay
value between the gateway and MQTT Broker. While packet
loss is calculated based on retransmission packages during
the testing process within 5 minutes in each part. We
performed the test repetition three times for the purpose of
data validation.
We analyze the delay and packet loss data sent from the
gateway to MQTT Broker based on the loading of the
number of sensors and the number of nodes. In this study, we
used three nodes. Each node consists of five sensors.
size of the data set is greater. Loading one sensor at node 1
shows a delay value of 52.23 ms. Meanwhile, loading two
sensors at node 1 results in a delay of 55.39 ms.
The network that is loaded using a node with a total of
five sensors produces a delay of 56.54 ms. When the network
is loaded using two nodes with the number of sensors as
many as ten pieces produce a delay of 56.56 ms. When the
network is loaded using three nodes with the number of
sensors as many as fifteen pieces produce a delay of 66.25
ms. This shows that the addition of the number of nodes can
increase the delay in sending data on the network. The
amount of delay is still categorized as very good (<150 ms)
according to standards issued by the European
Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).
B. Packet Loss Test Results
Figure 5 is the result of testing the packet loss by loading
the number of sensors and nodes mentioned earlier.
Based on the test results, it can be seen that the packet
loss value on the network testing that is loaded by a sensor is
3.16%. when the network is loaded using two sensors on a
node, it produces a packet loss of 3.88%
The network that is loaded by a node with five sensors, it
produces a packet loss of 4.73%. When the network is loaded
by two nodes, it produces a packet loss of 3.61%. When the
network is loaded by three nodes, it produces a packet loss of
4%. It shows that the addition of the number of nodes does
not always result in the addition of the percentage of packet
loss. Besides the delay factor, framing error, Time to Live
(TTL) and throughput can also affect packet loss values. The
number of packet losses is still in the good category (3% -
14%) based on standards issued by the European
Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).
Fig. 4. Delay test results

III. RESULT AND DISCUSSION

A. Delay Test Results

Figure 4 is the result of testing the delay by loading the
number of sensors and nodes mentioned earlier.
Based on the test results, the addition of the number of
sensors at each node is significant in influencing the delay.
This is because the amount of data sent is increasing, so the
Fig. 5. Packet loss test results

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IV. CONCLUSION
We test delay and packet loss on the data sent from the
gateway to MQTT Brokers (Publish) using the public LTE
cellular network. Based on the results of experiments that
have been done, it can be concluded that the delay and
packet loss from the data sent using QoS 0 from the MQTT
protocol on the heterogeneous wireless network which is
loaded by fifteen sensors on three nodes each is 66.25 ms
and 4%.

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