Cost-effective long-range secure speech communication system for internet of things-enabled applications

Abstract

A new communication framework has been developed that allows voice transmission over long distances for internet of things (IoT) applications such as healthcare, smart cities, and remote monitoring in the least costly way and most secure manner. The system is based on long range (LoRa) technology and takes advantage of its spread spectrum technique, to provide long range transmission without the high-power requirements. The main limitation is LoRa’s bandwidth with a maximum throughput of 22 kbps for data. This presents a challenge for voice transmission communications. To address this shortened bandwidth issue, researchers developed an innovative compression solution that compresses voice data to less than 8 kbps to fit into LoRa’s capabilities. The compression allows for real practical voice communications and possibly can provide even greater distance than an uncompressed voice transmission update. The voice communications transmissions have cryptographic protection in place to protect the transmitted voice messages from unauthorized access.