LoRaWAN Support

[thommck]

The LoRaWAN protocol is a very common solution for edge devices, thanks to it's capability to connect across large distances. For example there are already 881 public LoRaWAN gateways connected all around the United Kingdom (source).
The issue is these LoRa devices usually communicate with the public Things Network, rather than a private network. This makes it more complex and have a higher risk than connecting via Akri on a locally deployed solution and then on to a cloud provider like Azure.

Describe the solution you'd like
Enable LoRa devices to be able to connect to Akri straight out of the box

Describe alternatives you've considered
IoT Edge Starter kit is a custom method but doesn't follow the same CNCF standards based approach as Akri

[agracey]

Hey, this would be a great thing to build!

Before we do, it's likely worth a having a more general conversation about if we want the core project maintainers to also maintain all of the discovery handlers or should we maintain a library of 3rd party options instead.

[lilustga]

@thommck how can we support you here? Are you looking to contribute changes to enable this? Or is this a feature request?

[thommck]

It's a feature request. I don't have the skills to contribute to the development

…

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[kate-goldenring]

Before we can more this to backlog of Discovery Handlers to put on the roadmap, we should do some investigation into how open LoRaWAN licensing is and whether it is permissible within a CNCF project. If that investigation shows that the licensing is not open enough, an individual/third party could still create the discovery handler and we could point to it in documentation

[yujinkim-msft]

@EthanChangAED

[EthanChangAED]

LoRaWan has a device certification program. Other than that, I believe there is no restriction on building join server, application server based on the LoRaWan specification and the lorawan-stack. There are already many application/solution in the market, including open-source or free ones.
However, I think the LoRaWan has a complete design of network and connection topology, as well as a provision process. A LoRaWan device is not a typical "leaf device". I think we would need some dev assessment (if it hasn't been done) on whether there is a place for Akri to fit in before moving this to our backlog.

@thommck , it would be great if you can share your thought about how Akri integrate with or enhance the LoRaWan architecture.

[EthanChangAED]

The investigation for business/licensing perspective is done. Change the status to triage needed as we need some more triage from implementation point of view.