{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,3]],"date-time":"2026-08-03T05:59:38Z","timestamp":1785736778396,"version":"3.56.0"},"reference-count":27,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"15","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,7,23]],"date-time":"2020-07-23T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1595462400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities","award":["PERSEIDES (Grant No.TIN2017-86885-R)"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["PERSEIDES (Grant No.TIN2017-86885-R)"]}]},{"name":"Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities","award":["Ramon y Cajal Program (Grant No. RYC-2017-23823)"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["Ramon y Cajal Program (Grant No. RYC-2017-23823)"]}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001961","name":"AXA Research Fund","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["AXA Postdoctoral Scholarship (Cyber-SecIoT)"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["AXA Postdoctoral Scholarship (Cyber-SecIoT)"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001961","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/100007406","name":"BBVA Foundation","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2018 Leonardo Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2018 Leonardo Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100007406","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100000780","name":"European Commission","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["IoTCrawler (Grant No. 7798520)"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["IoTCrawler (Grant No. 7798520)"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100000780","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100000780","name":"European Commission","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["Pharaon (Grant No. 857188)"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["Pharaon (Grant No. 857188)"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100000780","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The distribution of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in remote areas and the need for network resilience in such deployments is increasingly important in smart spaces covering scenarios, such as agriculture, forest, coast preservation, and connectivity survival against disasters. Although Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies, like LoRa, support high connectivity ranges, communication paths can suffer from obstruction due to orography or buildings, and large areas are still difficult to cover with wired gateways, due to the lack of network or power infrastructure. The proposal presented herein proposes to mount LPWAN gateways in drones in order to generate airborne network segments providing enhanced connectivity to sensor nodes wherever needed. Our LoRa-drone gateways can be used either to collect data and then report them to the back-office directly, or store-carry-and-forward data until a proper communication link with the infrastructure network is available. The proposed architecture relies on Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) capabilities to host a virtualization platform on-board the drone, aiming at providing an intermediate processing layer that runs Virtualized Networking Functions (VNF). This way, both preprocessing or intelligent analytics can be locally performed, saving communications and memory resources. The contribution includes a system architecture that has been successfully validated through experimentation with a real test-bed and comprehensively evaluated through computer simulation. The results show significant communication improvements employing LoRa-drone gateways when compared to traditional fixed LoRa deployments in terms of link availability and covered areas, especially in vast monitored extensions, or at points with difficult access, such as rugged zones.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s20154109","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,7,23]],"date-time":"2020-07-23T11:26:01Z","timestamp":1595503561000},"page":"4109","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":17,"title":["Enhancing Extensive and Remote LoRa Deployments through MEC-Powered Drone Gateways"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"20","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9429-8634","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jorge","family":"Gallego-Madrid","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0038-9012","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Alejandro","family":"Molina-Zarca","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0069-3017","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ramon","family":"Sanchez-Iborra","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7538-4788","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jorge","family":"Bernal-Bernabe","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9224-7112","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jos\u00e9","family":"Santa","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electronics, Computer Technology and Projects, Technical University of Cartagena, 30202 Cartagena, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2263-1327","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Pedro Miguel","family":"Ruiz","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5525-1259","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Antonio F.","family":"Skarmeta-G\u00f3mez","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,7,23]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1420","DOI":"10.1109\/JLT.2018.2800660","article-title":"Integration of IoT, Transport SDN, and Edge\/Cloud Computing for Dynamic Distribution of IoT Analytics and Efficient Use of Network Resources","volume":"36","author":"Munoz","year":"2018","journal-title":"J. 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