A scalable software update service for IoT devices in urban scenarios

Abstract

Devices in the Internet of Things (IoT) are software-driven, thus, they need not be only programmed before deployment, but also continuously updated. IoT deployments in urban scenarios are particularly relevant as enablers of smart city applications. For such a context, this work addresses the reliability and security aspects of distributing software updates to a large number of IoT devices. Specifically, it presents a design and implementation of a software update framework for IoT devices in urban scenarios. The proposed approach leverages long-range wireless broadcast to update a large number of IoT devices at the same time, which scales up to the massive networks that are typical of densely-populated and built-up metropolitan areas. Experiments on a real testbed demonstrate that the proposed approach obtains a long range (up to 350 m) and a success rate higher than 99% with a single transmission, for IoT devices deployed both outdoors and indoors. In particular, broadcast updates are always more efficient than standard updates over the Internet through enterprise WiFi for typical urban IoT deployments.