The Internet-of-Things (IoT) has become integral to modern life, with wireless sensors and devices serving as essential components. These technologies utilize short-range wireless links like Bluetooth and Zigbee, or long-range Low-power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) tailored to IoT device requirements. However, Unlicensed-LPWAN systems, like LoRa, face challenges due to the burgeoning number of IoT devices, causing network congestion and hindering scalability. These technologies are approaching their scaling limits, necessitating upgrades. The MIOT research proposal aims to address the fundamental challenges of unlicensed-LPWAN communication, facilitating IoT network scaling and supporting energy-efficient nodes. Key practical constraints include scaling existing standards without significant changes and exploring new technologies for long-term evolution. Three research centers both in France (IRISA and Lab-STICC) and Switzerland (EPFL) collaborate on three main innovations: improving receivers, developing an advanced radio-access infrastructure, and exploring new waveforms and channel codes. The research involves theoretical analysis, simulations, and multi-site measurements to validate these innovations. Extensions wiil be benchmarked against current systems, with the developed code made available as OpenSource for wider collaboration and experimentation. More specifically, the MIOT project aims to enhance spectral efficiency through: • Associating q-ary modulations with q-ary non-binary codes to design an efficient waveform, • Using advanced multi-user detection algorithms, that goes behind the classical SIC decoder, • Leveraging a global Cloud-RAN architecture to perform a global multi-user receiver, • Optimizing waveform parameters at the Cloud-RAN level.
