Implementation of a Multi-Channel DASH7 IoT Communication System for Packet Investigation and Validation

Abstract

The Internet of Things market has emerged over
the past decades and continues to grow. Therefore,
IoT devices have become omnipresent.
Many of these devices use a wireless connection
to send and receive data which are based on Low
Power Wide Area Network protocols. The most
used LPWAN technologies are Narrowband IoT
(NB-IoT), LoRaWAN, LTE-M, and Sigfox. Due
to the increasing amount of IoT devices, these
LPWAN protocols have become even more important.
However, many of these protocols are
proprietary, and therefore, it remains unknown
how they exactly operate. We dive into the inner
workings of one of these LPWAN protocols.
More specifically, we investigate the PHY of the
DASH7 Alliance Protocol (D7AP). We present
a fully-fledged DASH7 communication system
by using GNU Radio. The software can be used
as a simulation instrument and can be applied in
real-world scenarios by using low-cost Software-
Defined Radios. In this way, it is possible to investigate
a complete IoT transceiver system that
is open-source and easily adaptable. Furthermore,
it can be used to build up, investigate, and
validate DASH7 data packets.