ChirpStack Simulator is a C++ variant of the open-source simulator ChirpStack Simulator developed by brocaar and co. for the ChirpStack open-source LoRaWAN® Network-Server stack. By simulating real LoRa gateways and LoRa devices, ChirpStack Simulator allows ChirpStack users to check their setups, to debug failures and to have a thorough understanding of how ChirpStack really works in action.

As for many C++ projects, ChirpStack Simulator can be built using the CMake build system. The minimum required version of CMake is 3.15. To build ChirpStack Simulator, use the following commands:

$ bash scripts/pre-build.sh
$ bash scripts/build.sh

The binary file will be located at bin/chirpstack_simulator.

• About cryptopp: Running the bash script scripts/pre-build.sh before building is required because cryptopp is not fully supporting CMake as of now.
• About gRPC: Installing and configuring gRPC can be fairly complicated. See also: grpc-cpp, chirpstack-client.

Having a valid TOML configuration file is mandatory to run ChirpStack Simulator. This configuration file could be generated using the --generate-config-file command-line option:

./bin/chirpstack_simulator --generate-config-file [OUTPUT_FILE]

where OUTPUT_FILE is the path to the output file.

For example: ./bin/chirpstack_simulator --generate-config-file ./bin/chirpstack_simulator.toml

[general]
log_level = 4

[server]
network_server = "localhost:1700"
application_server = "localhost:8080"

[simulator]
jwt_token = ""
service_profile_id = ""
duration = 60
activation_time = 5

[simulator.device]
count = 100
uplink_interval = 10
f_port = 10
payload = "uplink_packet_1234"
frequency = 868100000
bandwidth = 125
spreading_factor = 12

[simulator.gateway]
min_count = 3
max_count = 5

[simulator.client]
enable_downlink_test = false
downlink_interval = 15
payload = "downlink_packet_1234"

• How to set JWT token: JWT token can be acquired in the Token field after creating a new API key using ChirpStack Application Server web-interface.
• How to set service-profile ID: Service-profile ID can be acquired in the URL after creating a new service-profile using ChirpStack Application Server web-interface.

To start ChirpStack Simulator, use the following command:

./bin/chirpstack_simulator --config [CONFIG_FILE]

where CONFIG_FILE is the path to the configuration file.

For example: ./bin/chirpstack_simulator --config ./bin/chirpstack_simulator.toml

After parsing and validating the configuration parameters, ChirpStack Simulator uses the configured simulator.jwt_token and simulator.service_profile_id to create gateways and devices. Then, the simulation starts.

The simulation will be gracefully stopped after a simulator.duration interval. During this interval, devices will periodically send uplink frames (and handle downlink frames, if any) to the configured server.network_server through the gateways assigned to them.

If downlink test is enabled, downlink frames will also be sent periodically to the configured server.application_server while waiting to stop.

ChirpStack Simulator will be terminated by any of the following conditions:

• After a simulator.duration interval.
• When an exception is thrown.
• When receiving a SIGINT signal.

When the simulation stops, the gateways and devices created earlier will be deleted.

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license.