Secure and Sustainable FUOTA in Constrained IoT Infrastructures

Low-power and long-range Internet of Things (IoT) devices and infrastructures, such as those based on Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN), are increasingly becoming integral components of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Although they are advantageous in terms of economical and energy costs, Firmware Update Over-The-Air (FUOTA) is a challenge. The deployment of robust security mechanisms remains severely constrained by the limited energy, computational resources, and bandwidth of these devices. Stronger cryptographic primitives, larger keys, higher computational complexity, and increased communication overhead threaten the operational sustainability of constrained nodes and the efficiency of the underlying network. This work proposes a performance evaluation method based on Generalized Stochastic Petri Nets (GSPN) to model and analyze the behavior of FUOTA procedures in resource-constrained IoT, based on LoRaWAN Class A infrastructure. Building on this analysis, we outline the technological and architectural evolutions required to enable secure and sustainable FUOTA mechanisms in such scenarios.