Gateway-rs, the software backing all IoT Hotspots on the Helium Network, has been upgraded to include several key performance improvements related to data delivery and Proof of Coverage response times.
Data Session Keys
The Hotspot will negotiate a session key with the Helium Packet Router upon connection. The Hotspot can sign packets much faster with the session key compared to the key in the secure element because the session keys are kept in the Hotspot's memory. The use of session keys will decrease packet delivery latency by approximately 150ms. The decreased latency has the opportunity to improve LoRaWAN join-accept and other downlink performance in certain scenarios. The decreased latency also provides the opportunity for Hotspots to transfer higher volumes of data.
Parallelization of Tasks
When a Hotspot receives a Proof of Coverage witness it will connect to the Helium oracles to deliver the signed witness report. The Hotspot will now parallelize some of the tasks associated with witness delivery. The Hotspot will initiate a connection to the oracles while at the same time signing the witness report. By doing these tasks in parallel the witness report should be delivered significantly faster than before.
ECC Chip Handling Improvements
The drivers for the ECC608 chip were significantly improved to reduce the time required to sign a message. By fine-tuning the timings and sleep behavior of the chip, the Hotspot will be able to deliver Proof of Coverage messages to the Helium Oracles more rapidly.
Summary
- Data session keys significantly reduce latency when delivering data packets. Session keys are not currently applied to Proof of Coverage messages.
- Parallelization of tasks combined with ECC608 driver improvement will significantly reduce latency when delivering Proof of Coverage reports.
Gateway-rs 1.1.0 was issued and mistakenly tagged as production-ready. As it was tagged as a main release, the Bobber (Bobcat) team sent out gateway-rs 1.1.0 to their fleet of Hotspots. No fault from Bobber, they were doing what was expected of them. As a result, Bobber Hotspots saw a significant increase in rewards vs. other manufacturers that did not update. All other manufacturers are currently updating to gateway-rs 1.1.1 and will now be on an “even playing field” with Hotspots from other manufacturers.
For the full list of changes in this release and 1.1.0, see the release change log.