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IoT Network Hotspots

IoT Hotspot Properties​

The IoT Hotspot software gateway-rs is in production, satisfying the following properties:

  • A Hotspot on the Helium network will Beacon automatically on a pre-determined time interval.
  • A Hotspot will submit PoC receipts directly to an Off-Chain PoC Oracle.
  • A Hotspot will transmit packets on behalf of IoT devices on the Network to an Off-Chain Data Oracle.
  • A Hotspot will no longer depend on libp2p or "gossip", and instead use gRPC, a new framework to communicate between distributed systems.
  • A Hotspot will be eligible to earn IOT token rewards.
  • A Hotspot will reconnect every 30 minutes to Packet Router Service in order to ensure healthy connection and optimal load distribution.
Naming

All IoT Hotspots are referred to as "Hotspots", discarding the previous distinctions of "Full Hotspot" and "Light Hotspot."

With the switch to gateway-rs, all IoT Hotspots are "Light Hotspots", so the prefix is no longer needed.

HIP 70 Changes​

HIP-70 has passed. HIP-70 proposes a new architecture involving several Oracles, allowing Proof-of-Coverage (PoC) generation to be automated and its receipts to be off-chain.

The most taxing piece of PoC is not just Challenge creation but Receipt validation and verification. By taking these tasks off-chain, PoC event frequency can increase to several times daily. As a result, Hotspot operators can expect more reliable challenges and witness events.

IoT Proof-of-Coverage Architecture Overview​

  1. A Hotspot broadcasts a Beacon.
  2. Nearby Hotspot(s) witness the Beacon.
  3. Witness Hotpot(s) submit a receipt to an Ingestor Oracle.
  4. The Packet Verifier gets data from the Packet Router.
  5. The Ingestor Oracle uploads the receipts to a cloud store.
  6. A Verifier Oracle takes this input from the Ingestor Oracle and the Packet Verifier to filter out invalid receipts and produce a Reward output.
  7. The Reward output passes to the Reward Oracle, determining how many reward shares a Hotspot should earn for the epoch.
  8. Finally, the Injector Oracle distributes Hotspots rewards.

Code and Development​

The bulk of the code that enables Hotspots on actual LoRaWAN gateways is Helium's next-generation packet forwarder called gateway-rs.

Join The Conversation

For real-time development and community support of Data-Only Hotspots and IoT Hotspots, please join the #gateway-development channel on the official Helium Discord