REVIEW article
Front. Commun. Netw.
Sec. IoT and Sensor Networks
This article is part of the Research TopicNon-Terrestrial IoT Networks: Architectures, Applications, and Future ChallengesView all 3 articles
Direct-to-Satellite Internet of Things (DtS-IoT): A Tutorial Review on Architectures, Protocols, and Future Directions
Provisionally accepted
- 1NavRA & Computer Scientist, Turkey, instanbul, Türkiye
- 2Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy
- 3Inria, INSA Lyon, Lyon, France
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The Internet of Things (IoT) is increasingly used in agriculture, logistics, smart cities, environmental monitoring, and industrial automation. However, many remote, rural, maritime, and disaster-prone regions remain disconnected because deploying terrestrial infrastructure is prohibitively expensive or technically infeasible. Direct-to-Satellite IoT (DtS-IoT) addresses this gap by leveraging Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies, such as adapted LoRa and Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT), which both enable direct communication between IoT devices and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites and provide the long-range, low-power operation required for such links. This tutorial paper provides a structured and accessible introduction to DtS-IoT. Building on recent literature, it covers seven major themes: (i) system architectures, (ii) constellation design, (iii) LPWAN protocols, (iv) key challenges, (v) simulation tools, (vi) experimental studies, and (vii) future directions and open research issues. The goal is to guide the reader through the foundational concepts, design principles, and current technological landscape of DtS-IoT, offering a comprehensive set of references for further study.
Keywords: Direct-to-Satellite IoT, Internet of Things, LORA, LPWAN, NB-IoT, Satellite constellations
Received: 20 Nov 2025; Accepted: 26 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Akar, Garello and Fraire. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Roberto Garello
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