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Article

Gateway-Free LoRa Mesh on ESP32: Design, Self-Healing Mechanisms, and Empirical Performance

by
Danilo Arregui Almeida
1,
Juan Chafla Altamirano
1,
Milton Román Cañizares
1,
Pablo Palacios Játiva
2,
Javier Guaña-Moya
1 and
Iván Sánchez
3,*
1
Facultad de Hábitat, Infraestructura y Creatividad, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Quito 17012184, Ecuador
2
Escuela de Informática y Telecomunicaciones, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago 8370190, Chile
3
Department of Networking and Telecommunication Engineering, Universidad de las Américas, Quito 170503, Ecuador
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sensors 2025, 25(19), 6036; https://doi.org/10.3390/s25196036
Submission received: 19 August 2025 / Revised: 19 September 2025 / Accepted: 24 September 2025 / Published: 1 October 2025

Abstract

LoRa is a long-range, low-power wireless communication technology widely used in Internet of Things (IoT) applications. However, its conventional implementation through Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) presents operational constraints due to its centralized topology and reliance on gateways. To overcome these limitations, this work designs and validates a gateway-free mesh communication system that operates directly on commercially available commodity microcontrollers, implementing lightweight self-healing mechanisms suitable for resource-constrained devices. The system, based on ESP32 microcontrollers and LoRa modulation, adopts a mesh topology with custom mechanisms including neighbor-based routing, hop-by-hop acknowledgments (ACKs), and controlled retransmissions. Reliability is achieved through hop-by-hop acknowledgments, listen-before-talk (LBT) channel access, and duplicate suppression using alternate link triggering (ALT). A modular prototype was developed and tested under three scenarios such as ideal conditions, intermediate node failure, and extended urban deployment. Results showed robust performance, achieving a Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), the percentage of successfully delivered DATA packets over those sent, of up to 95% in controlled environments and 75% under urban conditions. In the failure scenario, an average Packet Recovery Ratio (PRR), the proportion of lost packets successfully recovered through retransmissions, of 88.33% was achieved, validating the system’s self-healing capabilities. Each scenario was executed in five independent runs, with values calculated for both traffic directions and averaged. These findings confirm that a compact and fault-tolerant LoRa mesh network, operating without gateways, can be effectively implemented on commodity ESP32-S3 + SX1262 hardware.
Keywords: ESP32-S3; SX1262; IoT; LoRa mesh; listen-before-talk; self-healing; hop-by-hop ACK ESP32-S3; SX1262; IoT; LoRa mesh; listen-before-talk; self-healing; hop-by-hop ACK

Share and Cite

MDPI and ACS Style

Arregui Almeida, D.; Chafla Altamirano, J.; Román Cañizares, M.; Játiva, P.P.; Guaña-Moya, J.; Sánchez, I. Gateway-Free LoRa Mesh on ESP32: Design, Self-Healing Mechanisms, and Empirical Performance. Sensors 2025, 25, 6036. https://doi.org/10.3390/s25196036

AMA Style

Arregui Almeida D, Chafla Altamirano J, Román Cañizares M, Játiva PP, Guaña-Moya J, Sánchez I. Gateway-Free LoRa Mesh on ESP32: Design, Self-Healing Mechanisms, and Empirical Performance. Sensors. 2025; 25(19):6036. https://doi.org/10.3390/s25196036

Chicago/Turabian Style

Arregui Almeida, Danilo, Juan Chafla Altamirano, Milton Román Cañizares, Pablo Palacios Játiva, Javier Guaña-Moya, and Iván Sánchez. 2025. "Gateway-Free LoRa Mesh on ESP32: Design, Self-Healing Mechanisms, and Empirical Performance" Sensors 25, no. 19: 6036. https://doi.org/10.3390/s25196036

APA Style

Arregui Almeida, D., Chafla Altamirano, J., Román Cañizares, M., Játiva, P. P., Guaña-Moya, J., & Sánchez, I. (2025). Gateway-Free LoRa Mesh on ESP32: Design, Self-Healing Mechanisms, and Empirical Performance. Sensors, 25(19), 6036. https://doi.org/10.3390/s25196036

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