Network Architecture and Authentication Scheme for LoRa 2.4 GHz Smart Homes

The IoT-based smart grid provides many benefits to both energy consumers and energy producers, such as advanced metering functions, improved reliability, and management. Increasingly with the rise of smart homes and smart cities, security is a concern, as data networks increasingly run parallel to power networks. Ensuring good security practices are implemented in the smart home is critical. This study proposes a Home Area Network architecture design, and secure ChaCha20-Poly1305 Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data (AEAD) based authentication scheme, based on the recent LoRa 2.4 GHz technology; a robust and highly tunable transmission technology. This results in a network that balances performance considerations, whilst providing confidentiality, integrity and authenticity through the use of symmetric key-based authentication and encryption scheme. A performance analysis is conducted using a practical test bench to determine the impact that the proposed security mechanisms have on the LoRa network. The secure architecture proposed by this study has a minimal impact on the transmission time of a packet compared to a network with no security measures. This additional latency does not negatively impact on the smart home user in terms of network performance.