The Internet of Things has gained much of its notoriety from wireless applications such as smart watches and Wi-Fi based smart home controls. This wireless backbone may have much to do with the massive projected growth of IoT devices deployments. Why? For consumers, businesses, and governments wireless means more data and less cost. The cost involved in installing the cheapest of sensors is easily eclipsed by the planning, purchase, and pulling of the wiring needed to connect it. This is especially true where infrastructures were built well before the word “electronics” evolved.

A unique case that illustrates this point sprang out of MIT’s first IoT Bootcamp, where the author recently gave a talk on low-power wireless IoT. One student team, whose members hailed from Turkey, posed a unique problem – and devised an even more innovative solution. In Turkey, yearly flash flooding accounts for hundreds of millions in damage, and many injuries and deaths. Major infrastructure changes are difficult to implement with limited budgets and the complexity of government operations. The team's answer to this complex problem as to implement wireless sensors.

Flooding in Turkish city of Artvin - August, 2015.

In order to save life and minimize damage, the boot-campers recognized that citizens and city personnel needed time to prepare for those floods. This meant knowing when and where they were most likely to occur. The secret to this knowledge is underground – in the sewers and drainages running throughout the city. The key is to monitor water levels below ground throughout the entire city. Armed with this information, quick action can be taken to evacuate or even protect property against flooding. The first step is to place sensors that measure these subterranean water levels and then integrate them with a system that alerts the appropriate personnel when levels reach critical thresholds.

It would be cost-prohibitive to wire the entire underground sewer system of each Turkish city affected by flooding, but modern IoT offers a cost-effective solution: LoRaWAN. This Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) is designed for monitoring many wireless, battery power sensors at long ranges. LoRaWAN overcomes some major challenges encountered in the type of IoT deployment required for a flash flood early warning system:

• It’s wireless – no cost to route cabling to underground sensors
• It’s low power – special network protocols allow battery powered sensors to last years
• It’s long range – even in cities, signals from sensor to gateway achieve up to 2 miles
• It’s robust – sub-GHz radio offers better signal penetration through concrete than cellular and LoRaWAN's encoding schemes improve detection of very weak signals
• It’s high capacity – a gateway can handle over 1000 devices, each reporting every minute

The MIT Bootcamp team implemented a LoRaWAN network to power their water level sensors. Each device reported measurements back to a LoRaWAN enabled gateway. That data was then used to trigger email or SMS alerts. Taking it one step further, the students also set up a traffic control system that green-lighted the evacuation route based on predicted flood patterns. The demonstration was impressive in its functionality and practicality. A system like this may soon be giving citizens and governments throughout Turkey, and perhaps flood prone areas throughout the world, the extra time needed protect property and save lives.

LoRaWAN flood level monitor prototype built by MIT IoT Bootcamp students - June, 2017.

LoRaWAN technology allows large networks of battery operated, wireless sensors to be deployed in areas that are inaccessible to cellular signals and too costly for wiring to reach. This opens the door for countless new applications, especially in the realm of disaster and city management.

Irrigation redistributes natural water sources for primarily agricultural use. There are several consequences to this process that are unavoidable, but optimization of irrigation minimizes these issues. Here are a few of those problems.

Let start with a major source of irrigation – the river. Redirection of water from natural sources reduces water available to the natural ecosystem. An irrigation system drawing from a river reduces the downstream flow. This reduces the available volume of living space for organisms in the river ecosystem. It also reduces transport of natural sedimentation causing sediment buildup, which chokes river flow even further. If extreme enough, this poor management of water diversion can alter the ecosystem and lead to higher potential for flooding during heavy precipitation. In addition to this, increased distribution of river water into many tributaries, increases the total surface area of river water exposed to air. This causes more rapid evaporation which means loss of water to atmosphere and an increase in atmospheric moisture which leads to uncontrolled redistribution of this water in the form of unpredictable precipitation.

Now let’s discuss the irrigated area. Water redirected into a crop field is intended for use in growing the crop. Unfortunately, not all this water can be used as much is retained in the soil, evaporated, or drained. Water not used for the crop is typically in the range of 40-60% or redirected water. If not properly drained, that additional water will increase the ground water table level, recharge aquifers, and cause water logging. River water contains a variety of salts and all the additional water saturating a poorly drained field increases soil salinity and ultimately reduces crop yield. The higher water table also reduces soil oxygenation, further affecting yield. Salinity is a global problem and the UN estimates that up to 20% of the world’s irrigated land is affected – with India, China, and Pakistan some of the most afflicted nations.

There are a variety of ancillary problems associate with poor irrigation management. Stagnation of water tables from water logging create breeding grounds for diseases like malaria and yellow fever. Excess drainage into rivers can introduce agricultural chemicals and salts that damage the ecosystem and make the water unsuitable or unsafe for human consumption. Poor drainage control can affect downstream water users and excess irrigation draw can reduce water available for livestock, fishing, and household use.

Precision in irrigation draw and drainage is the key to optimizing the use of this critical resource. To start, we need to know the details and that means collecting data. Irrigation systems can be extensive and complex, so the task may seem daunting, but the IoT (Internet of Things) field can be tapped for a cost-effective way of collecting the detailed data needed to indicate where and what the problems are. An IoT sensor network could be used to detect flow rates for rivers, irrigation channels, and drainages. Soil sensors can be leveraged to measure salinity and oxygen levels. Submersible detectors can be used to assess chemical concentration in rivers. Weather stations can be linked to track changes in humidity. These metrics can be collected with strategically placed arrays of wireless sensors. The historical data from those devices can be stitched together and visualized as heat maps over-laid on digital property maps. This gives land owners and governments the ability to monitor the state of an irrigation system and the environment it is embedded in. It also highlights changes in both over time and allows for more accurate predictions, more effective proposed solutions, and the ability to simulate the results of multiple courses of action (or inaction).

IoT systems that leverage long-rage, low-power networks enable vast wireless networks of sensors connected back to gateways that aggregate that data and transmit it to the cloud. Once that data is collected, online data storage and analytics platforms can be used to make effective predictions and generate plausible solutions. These networks are easy to setup, require little additional infrastructure due to their wireless nature, are fairly maintenance free, and are remotely manageable. Web-based data handling platforms are also becoming more and more customizable and easier to use. With existing IoT technology, irrigation can be intelligent, resources can be preserved, and both short and long-term costs associate with poor water management can be brought down.

The IoT phenomenon has grown explosively. It turns out, knowing and visualizing the invisible side of the physical world is quite popular. This makes sense – devices from personal health trackers to professional air quality monitors help both the athlete and city make course changing decisions quickly, with ease, and at relatively low cost. At the beginning of this big market bang, there will be, and are, many competitors racing to develop their own solutions – each addressing many of the same specific industry needs in a different way.

Some IoT developers are accomplishing this in their garages and getting products to market in times that would challenge the largest of companies. Rapid prototyping, open-source components and code, as well as small production run factories with access to near-unlimited components and manufacturing processes (think China) have amplified the startup's ability to be an effective market player. Huge R&D budgets and manufacturing infrastructures are no longer necessary to get a product off the ground. 3D printing, Arduino's, and Raspberry Pi - have allowed “makers” to develop amazing electronic devices for fun and startups to develop new proof of concepts overnight.

While getting a proof of concept up and running is much easier with maker tools, designing a finished product that can be sold is still a challenge. On the hardware side, this consist of designing the circuitry and the enclosure – neither of which is a small task. Both need to be planned so they are the right size and shape for your use case. The circuitry’s complexity includes radio frequency design and integrating RF components with sensors, a microcontroller, and power supply. The enclosure needs to meet certain specs for the intended operating environment, while protecting the board and allowing the sensors access to the outside. It also must have the right shape, color, texture, and print on the outside. But, before diving into these intricacies, the developer needs to specify and implement a communication protocol (e.g. Wi-Fi, LoRaWAN, NB-IoT) and this takes careful consideration and expertise.

Each communication protocol has its niche. Wi-Fi is great for home owners who typically have existing coverage. But, even with this ubiquitous technology, there are vast areas that are uncovered and make it less useful for other applications such as outdoor tracking, smart agricultural, or irrigation monitoring for example. LoRaWAN provides ultra-long-range capability that Wi-Fi lacks and is perfect for environmental sensing and non-real-time asset tracking. It falls short when you need real-time or large data – for example, when tracking the alignment of product on a fast-moving conveyor or when transmitting video or audio. NB-IoT leverages existing cellular coverage, and has higher bandwidth, but brings limited penetration into more remote areas and below grade – think about the last time you made a call from deep within a parking garage. Its infrastructure is maintained by the large providers, but that also means less flexibility when coverage is poor – and it means each device requires a data plan.

Once the right protocol is selected, each has specific implementation frameworks with many facets that are left to the developer to flesh out – hardware, firmware, and software, including security and provisioning. IoT hardware providers are taking steps to alleviate this pain however, and this will be a key to more rapid device development from a variety of new companies. The solution is to provide a chipset or module that removes the complexity of developing the radio circuitry and bypasses the need to work with your protocol implementation from the ground up. These chipsets let the developer focus on the form and functions of the device, rather than the low-level radio minutiae. Many require integration with higher level components such as a microcontroller, antennae, and sensors – and they offer documentation for these integrations that is much more defined.

As the value that IoT solutions bring to home, commerce and industry, become clearer, demand continue its already-predicted exponential boom. Creative and entrepreneurial tinkerers will be drawn to this light, but now will have the power to take their garage-forged prototypes to industry-grade products easier and quicker. This is an exciting prospect as it brings more and more fresh blood to IoT which in turn brings extensive variety, healthy competition, and new solutions we have not yet imagined.

During the winter, I typically sleep with my windows closed and heat on, and I’m sure this is not uncommon in the Pacific Northwest. I also like to keep the door closed to retain the room’s heat. Maybe you’ve noticed that, in this state, a room can get stuffy quickly. And, if you manage to sleep the night through, perhaps you’ve experienced that groggy and unrested feeling in the morning.

This daily struggle caused me to launch my own experiment at home with a few wireless environmental sensors. For this impromptu Smart Home upgrade, I placed a carbon dioxide (CO2) sensor in my bedroom just before turning in and I let it run overnight. The data from this sensor (and a few others I was evaluating) was being streamed to a dashboard on my computer which I checked in the morning. Here’s what I noticed.

These bubbles are only refreshing in your soda.

Guinea Pig

First, it was tough to wake up that morning. I started this self-inflicted experiment with my room vented to the outdoors for about 20 minutes prior to sleeping. This ensured that the CO2 concentration was near outdoor levels – about 350-450 parts per million (ppm). In the morning, I opened the door and window again to allow full ventilation. After waking slowly, with the aid of some strong coffee, I checked the sensor dashboard. The results, plotted below, show that nighttime CO2 levels in my room stabilized at almost 1500 ppm.

Measured CO2 levels in my bedroom overnight. Note when the windows and doors are closed and opened.

My curiosity was piqued. Could this concentration of CO2 be causing my morning struggle, or was it simply stress, late-night YouTube sessions, or plain laziness? I jumped online to do some research and found several studies on CO2 as an indoor air pollutant. Two stood out: a study performed by U. Satish, et al., in 2012 and another by J.G. Allen, et al., published in 2016. Both addressed human cognitive function in relation to CO2 concentrations.

Office Drone

These studies were aimed at workers in office environments, rather than those sleeping at home, but the results indicated that high CO2 concentrations would indeed effect human mental function - negatively. The report by Satish indicated that, relative to a 600 ppm baseline, at just 1000 ppm of CO2, decision-making performance was moderately affected. At 2500 ppm, decision making performance took a large hit. The study by Allen found even more dramatic effects. It exposed subjects to three tiers of CO2 concentrations: 550 ppm (day one), 945 ppm (day two), and 1400 ppm (day three). The subjects were placed in an office environment with a regulated atmosphere and given a variety of tasks to assess various aspects of their cognitive functions on each day. On average, and relative to day one, cognitive function scores decreased by 15% on day two and by 50% on day three. The gist of the study by Allen was that increased ventilation and the use low-emitting building material correlates to increased cognitive function. This is due to reduced concentrations of indoor air pollutants (CO2 and volatile organic compounds or VOCs). The study also hints that the advantages of “green” building materials and active ventilation systems outweigh their increased costs – i.e. healthier, happier employees are more productive (and more pleasant) and take less sick leave. Now, what about sleep?

Allen study results show average reduction in cognitive performance with increase in CO2 concentrations.

Bed Ridden

I also discovered a 2015 study by P. Strøm-Tejsen, et al., which assessed the effects of air quality on sleep and next-day performance. The paper detailed that, especially in cold regions, and in bedrooms with doors closed for privacy and windows closed for warmth, CO2 concentrations regularly exceeded 2500 ppm. Findings by Allen, previously mentioned, indicate that this would dramatically reduce cognitive function. And, in fact, Strøm-Tejsen found that improved ventilation lead to reports of better sleep and next-day performance by the test subjects. Another study in 2007 by J.J. Fraigne, et al., supports this. It measured the effect of CO2 on sleep in cats and found that high concentrations of CO2 reduced REM and NREM sleep duration and frequency. This indicates that both waking mental performance and sleep quality are affected by peak CO2 levels that are easily attainable in these environments.

Strøm-Tejsen measured CO2 in bedrooms with and without ventilation. It’s dramatic.

Sensing Solutions

One personal experiment and four research papers later, I had a pretty good idea that CO2 concentrations can get high enough in a building to affect people in a tangible way. These studies are important because we spend most of our lives indoors and there are clear benefits to improving that environment. The advantages include healthy, happy, and productive people coupled with more efficient energy use. Excellent ventilation is key, but it is not economically viable, or even humanly comfortable, to run building HVAC at maximum capacity, or to keep all your windows open. One way to strike a balance, is by applying enough ventilation to keep CO2 and other pollutant concentrations at levels that have little perceptible effect on cognition and health. The practical way to assess one’s success at this is to actively measure air quality throughout one's building. And, this is a real possibility in the IoT era. Wireless air quality sensors allow building owners to monitor these metrics in a cost-effective and easily deployable way. IoT systems like this protect our health, happiness, and wallets at the same time and this is arguably the essence of a “smart world”. This concept is also adaptable to any type of indoor environment. Smart buildings have the potential to keep you alert in your staff meeting, intellectually sharp in your university lecture, less dependent on caffeine (and other stimulants) or, just better prepared for that morning alarm.

References

https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1104789/
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/15-10037/
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ina.12254/full
http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/21/6/A1295-a

The Internet of Things appears to be an emerging and cutting edge phenomenon, but it is born from a simple idea - using computers to help us understand our environment. IoT does this by extending a computer’s reach to non-computer “devices” like soda machines, buildings in a city, or even our bodies.

The goal is to gather key data about a device’s state and to improve it by streamlining the infrastructure that supports it. A major challenge with building up an IoT system is “money.” Choices must be made to keep IoT cost-effective and those choices vary widely depending on the application. Let’s look at the goals and challenges of IoT a little more.

Why IoT?

Why gather data about a device’s state at all? Here is some elaboration on the examples we just introduced.

Imagine owning a soda vending machine company. Knowing a particular machine's inventory or operational state is essential so that a service tech can be deployed or re-routed to refill or repair it. Having remote access to this data means that a tech doesn’t have to go out there to check it regularly - either finding it full and happy (a wasted trip) or finding it completely empty or damaged (lost potential income). Now, imagine there are hundreds of these machines to manage. Having each unit monitored and networked means each service tech’s driving route can be optimized, saving time, labor cost, and gas expenses. Depending on the degree of streamlining, this may allow the business to expand.

The mystery coke machine in Seattle has its own Facebook page, but that's as digital as it gets. Wireless sensors could bring it up to date.

Let’s look at a major consumer application that is also considered an IoT technology – the fitness band. Monitoring your body with such a device and recoding the data it collects can help you streamline your health. Two examples are recording your average heart rate and sleep habits. While maybe purely curiosity driven, you could turn this data into better habits. If you own a fitness band, and noticed that your heart rate while eating Cheetos on the couch is 90 beat per minute, you might be motivated to start jogging in the morning. Or, if three Red Bulls by 10am isn't giving you wings, you may decide to stop watching YouTube until 2:00 am and get a full eight hours. Of course, these examples may or may not be based on reality.

Let’s zoom out a bit. What about the acclaimed smart city? Measuring temperatures or pollution (particulate matter or gasses) can enable more effective construction projects and optimize use of already limited city resources. A heat map of temperature levels throughout the day would help a city planner know where to place vegetation, which is shown to reduce hotspots in these concrete jungles, and makes the environment much more pleasant. It is not hard to see that a better environment can bring more foot traffic and higher quality vendors - boosting commerce and city income through sales tax. This could also encourage further development and result in reduced crime. A similar approach with pollution measurements would tell transportation officials where and when vehicle traffic is piling up, allowing them to plan better mass transit routes, provide incentives for biking, or to improve roads in only the right places.

The benefits for using IoT devices extend to all industries, but it is important to consider the costs of implementing this technology on a large scale. Implementation means making devices smart, connecting them to a network, and keeping them running.

Get Smart

Getting information from “dumb” devices to a remote computer is IoT at its core. Making devices smart means placing the right sensors on them, so that their various states can be quantified. This isn’t a new concept, but today’s implementation of it is. The Internet, coupled with wireless technologies, allow the remote monitoring of many devices - and this, combined with data storage and analysis tools, means we can finally get meaningful, actionable information. The perspective this data provides brings previously invisible patterns to light and our ability to communicate digitally allows us to respond to that insight almost instantly.

The IoT phenomenon is spreading fast, but the infrastructure needed to use it in industry cannot be built so quickly. Physically connecting things to the Internet is not always possible or cost-effective with existing infrastructures. We won’t be trashing all our soda machines or re-building hydroelectric dams (okay, this would be an extreme case.) But, if IoT costs us more than it promises to save us, we better forget about it. So what do we do to make it happen? Retrofit. Essentially, we need to get sensors onto devices – whether they be machines, buildings, or your body - and connect them to the Internet. Now we need to consider, what is the best way to get online?

Once sensors are connected, we need a way to remotely monitor them and collect their data.

Making Connections

With the right sensors in place, we now have a smart “device.” Almost. The enlightened machine still needs to make its intelligence known by communicating with the outside world via the Internet. There are many ways to do this, but by far the easiest is wirelessly. Wired infrastructures cost loads to install in existing structures, requiring invasive procedures on buildings and machines after extensive engineering and planning. The bottom line is efficiency - we don’t want to lose more money than we could save, or gain, from IoT. Wireless solutions mean smaller changes to the physical environment and many viable solutions already exist - Wi-Fi, cellular, and LPWAN to name a few. The choice of wireless technology depends on the environment and the data being sent. Wi-Fi can handle lots of data, but has limited range and signal penetration. LPWAN solutions encompass many implementations, but are mostly intended for low power devices that transmit small amounts of data. The range and network capacity is great for most sensors, but not for transmitting video or performing real-time tracking. Cellular connections, like hardwired solutions, allow for real-time transmission and high data volumes, but at a cost - each device needs a data line from a cellular carrier. And, unlike some LPWAN solutions or Wi-Fi, one would not own the cellular network and would have no way to extend coverage on their own (in an underground parking garage, for instance.) There will always be tradeoffs, so the choice depends on the both the application and budget. Once connected, however, we need to keep our devices running.

Power Play

Now, how does one keep these smart, connected sensors alive? Like the communication medium, the power source in many cases cannot be a wired one. This leaves essentially two options: batteries or power harvesting devices. Let’s look at the latter.

There is abundant energy in the environment that surround us in the form of solar, vibration, radio frequency, heat, sound, and more. This energy can be converted to electrical form with power harvesting devices and be used to drive sensors and wireless communication. While excellent for situations where low-power devices need to operate remotely for long periods of time, they are limited to specific environments, and thus, specific applications. As an obvious example, a solar powered sensor must be in the light - it can’t be used to measure conditions in a meat locker (well, not for long.) The energy source needs to be consistently present and intense enough – although this is mitigated in some cases by storing excess collected power in a small battery or capacitor. This means manufacturers would need to develop more specific solutions for a larger variety of use cases. The added design complexity and need for specialization means power harvesting devices will cost more up front. In certain cases, this may be an acceptable trade off, but it is a consideration for those just starting to delve into IoT.

It is more cost-effective as a manufacturer to produce a versatile solution and this means a more cost-effective option for the consumer. Batteries, therefore, tend to emerge as the best of the wireless options. They are simple, cheap, abundant, replaceable, potentially rechargeable, and provide reasonable run times. Additionally, they can be used in almost any environment. The drawbacks to the versatility include increased waste and replacement costs - there may be a thousand devices and someone must replace the batteries eventually. Perhaps, as power harvesting technologies become cheaper, more hybrid solutions will emerge to extend a device's battery life. Until then, the choice again depends on application and budget.

Energy can be collected from the environment, but, so far, batteries have proved to be the most cost-effective and versatile solution.

Conclusion

Getting actionable data from dumb devices to a computer that can help streamline an operation can be done in a cost-effective way. It may seem like a bit of an art, but contemplating the goals and challenges discussed above, will help guide the development or selection of an effective IoT solution – one that can optimize an operation without becoming a financial burden. That means not just considering what to sense or monitor, but also how to connect, power, maintain, and, eventually, scale the system. Planning an IoT solution with these ideas in mind will allow industries of all sizes to understand their environments at a deeper level. This will lead to more widespread adoption of IoT systems and that will significantly change how cities, factories, buildings, machines, businesses, and even our bodies, are run.

Low-Power, Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs) implemented using LoRa protocols becomes LoRaWAN. These protocols define an IoT device network that optimizes the network’s device capacity, device battery life, transmission range, and therefore, overall system cost. LoRaWAN is a communication protocol that works on top of the LoRa physical layer – the RF (radio frequency) part of the communication system. Implementing an LPWAN solution with LoRa & LoRaWAN requires expertise in both the physical and communications realms.

The advantages of LoRa solutions include low-cost, long-range, reliable signal transmission, high volumes of devices per gateway, low network power consumption, license-free band usage, and secure communications. The trade-offs are low data rate and latency (data is not truly real-time), and reliance on a gateway for connectivity where a failure of this hub could mean losing data from multiple devices.

There are many applications where the benefits of LoRaWAN solutions are attractive enough to overlook the development costs and trade-offs. So, what makes development hard? First, let’s consider an end device, such as a sensor.

Physical Implementation

To implement a LoRaWAN communication protocol, you need to have physical devices that operate on it – both end nodes and gateways. Each device needs a LoRa chipset, the required RF components, computing and sensor systems, and power circuitry. You must consider the potential device applications to decide what kind and quality of sensors to use, the type of power source required, and the appropriate antenna and enclosure for your environment. For gateways, you also need to consider the backhaul – how will you communicate the aggregated sensor data and network info to the platform you’ll use to manage devices, store data, and perform analytics.

The physical implementation not only requires considering which components to include, but also, how to package them so that they work properly – for example, temperature sensors need to be placed where they are far enough away from heat sources on the board and exposed to the environment, but also in a place where they are mechanically protected by the enclosure. This design can be a challenge when considering applications that might also require water-proof or explosion-proof containers.

The enclosure design itself is a challenge – in fact, it’s one of the hardest parts of building a device. It requires not only careful design, but also consideration of potential uses. You may be selling them to companies in a wide variety of businesses, from refineries to farms – what will your sensors or gateways be exposed to? How will they be mounted? What physical hazards surround it? What aesthetic is required? Making a mold for such an enclosure is a time and money intensive undertaking, so you need to consider a wide variety of possibilities to maximize the value you get from it and minimize the number of redesigns and specialized variations you may need to create in the future.

Once you have the device details sorted out, it’s time to consider how they will communicate.

Protocol Implementation

Once you have the physical characteristics of your system determined, you can then plan on implementing the LoRaWAN communications protocols. LoRaWAN is a specification only, so it is left to developers to implement it with devices running a LoRa physical layer. This is a complex undertaking and there is no right answer - every developer can have their own implementation of LoRaWAN. There are many aspects that are covered by the protocol and several that are not. The latter are left to the developer to solve, which leads to these variations.

Implementation for the device side of the solution is partially open source, but the server-side is completely up to the developer and, thus, the hardest part of the process. For the devices, LoRaWAN specifies the structure of the physical and MAC messages, MAC commands, end-device activation, and aspects of handling message acknowledgement and retransmission. Details of how to address your devices and provision them into the network are left to you. While the method of communication between devices, network management, and security are defined by LoRaWAN, they need to put in place by the developer. In the case of security, additional steps need to be taken to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the data being sent.

While there is no way around developing the hardware and protocol if you want to create your own IoT solutions, there are some companies that are providing an alternative to making one from scratch.

A Quicker Solution

While the LoRaWAN framework leaves a lot to the developer, it also allows you freedom to tailor your solution to your specific application and that allows you to be more competitive in your targeted market.

Starting from scratch with a LoRa device means understanding the operating environment and what you need to detect to develop your specifications. It means design, testing, and re-design of the circuitry: integrating the sensors, MCU, and RF ICs. It means programming the firmware for the device per the specific protocol implementation your LoRa gateway is using. That brings us to the LoRaWAN protocol itself: you are given a framework for communications and security, but are left to develop the firmware (and hardware) that implements it.

A faster solution for sensor development, and one that several LoRa solution developers are providing, is using a pre-packaged LoRa module which already integrates the RF, and in some cases the MCU. These chipsets are typically designed to and require a specific gateway implementation which the chipset manufacturer usually provides. Using these chipset modules eliminates the need to implement the LoRa and LoRaWAN protocols yourself and saves you hardware development costs by requiring use of an already existing gateway. Many solution developers will also provide design services for these sensors and, for an organization that needs a large scale wireless sensing solution, this helps keep them focused on their core business (instead of forcing them to become an IoT hardware developer).

At first glance, LoRaWAN implementation may like a simple concept, but it requires expertise in both hardware and software development. And once those steps, and multiple iterations of testing, are done, you can finally prepare for production. A great alternative is to use a pre-existing implementation from a company that allows for custom sensor development with a LoRa-based chipset.

Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) IoT technologies will make a significant contribution the agricultural industry by making precision agriculture more accessible.

Current State of Precision Agriculture

Precision agriculture is a method of optimizing management of crops, orchards, vineyards, etc., by using data obtained with various technologies. Some examples are remote soil sampling by wireless sensors and GPS-based automatic steering on harvesting and planting tractors. The former technology gives insight into soil nutrition - indicating where to apply fertilizer and how to adjust irrigation. The former ensures that over (or under) fertilization and seeding is eliminated, and that both processes are executed in the most fuel-efficient manner.

This technology-intensive approach allows fine-tuned management of an enterprise exposed to water shortages and high fuel costs. Optimization from collected data is usually accomplished with the aid of a Decision Support System (DSS) - computer software which combines data aggregation, modeling, and analytics to assist in high-level decision making. Ultimately, precision agriculture allows farmers to make more with less and pass that savings to the consumer.

Research suggests that the benefits of precision agriculture are real. A study done by PrecisionAg in 2013 stated that corn growers reported average cost savings of 6.8% and average yield increases of 7.6%. These benefits came from better harvesting techniques, precision application of seed and chemicals, and optimization of fuel and labor. A 2016 market brief by PrecisionAg, however, indicates that these technologies are considered unconventional tools by many farmers, and that much of the technology is far in advance of its perceived value. Unfortunately, the models that provide the best optimization also require historical data, and that means farmers need to begin adopting precision technologies to gain benefit in the long term.

The same report states that wireless coverage for some of these tools is poor, and implementation of multiple tools is complex, both of which further stunt adoption of precision techniques. Advances in LPWAN IoT, however, will be able to remedy these issues - both in coverage and ease of deployment and use.

Importance of Precision Agriculture

Why struggle with early adoption of precision agriculture technologies? There are more than a few benefits. Here are some of them:

1. Optimizing labor and material (fertilizer, irrigation, fuel) use and boosting revenue by increasing yield. Not all regions were created equally. Remote sensors help build a better understanding of the specific environment a crop is planted in. More data, more often, will give you a clear picture of your farm’s needs.

2. Immediate awareness of environmental details. Near-real-time data allows you to respond quicker to changing conditions. This is of special importance in continental regions, a home to many large vineyards, where climate changes rapidly without the moderating effect enjoyed near large lakes and seas.

3. Improved planning through the collection and use of historical crop data. Here’s where DSS comes in. The ability to attain and digest large amounts of data is for computers - they are much better at detecting the patterns and correlations that could change how a farm is run. Vital data from sensors in the field will help build models that correlate end-results such as yield, produce quality, and sales with a crop’s physical conditions. The more data that is collected, the better predictive models become, and this allows forecasting that will give farmers an idea of what they will face in the future - and the time to plan for it.

4. Environmental preservation. By limiting water and chemical use, you also reduce chemical run off. For us, and the rest of the ecosystem, this means water that is safe for consumption and more abundant. In addition, fuel consumption is also reduced, and along with it, emissions.

LPWAN IoT Contribution

So far, we have addressed how the tools and data can benefit agriculture. The question is, how do you get that data? Some sources already exist - geographic and historical weather data - but what about the precision that was promised? This is where IoT technologies become relevant. To get vital near-real-time, localized environmental data, you need to have sensors placed in your fields. The information attainable is extensive: soil conditions like pH, organic matter content, nutrients and minerals, moisture; weather conditions like temperature, humidity, light levels, pollutant concentrations. All these metrics can be aggregated and plotted in relation to geographic data using GIS tools. The changes can be mapped, cycles identified, predictions generated. This leads to better use of resources, whether it be fertilizer, water, fuel, or labor.

Building a network of appropriate sensors doesn’t have to be difficult either. LPWAN allows low-data rate devices, such as sensors, to connect wirelessly with the long-ranges, and reliability, needed in farming environments. Such devices can also operate on unlicensed bands, like those used by cordless phones and microwaves, meaning no additional cellular costs and no problem with cellular coverage gaps in remote locations. These technologies are already on the rise by government entities with limited budgets and less tolerance for high-learning curves - and equipment costs and implementation difficulty are continuing to drop as these IoT technologies become more ubiquitous.

Conclusion

Precision agriculture allows for the most efficient use of resources and optimizes crop yields. It relies on data collected from your specific region - which can be processed with software to help you make the best decisions and predictions possible. Wireless IoT technologies with low-power and long-rage provide a complementary benefit to precision agriculture - an easy, cost-effective, and reliable way to attain vital data and ultimately, improve crop yields.

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Low-Power Wide Area Networks that transmit and receive on the unlicensed ISM (Industrial, Scientific, Medical) band are up against their licensed, cellular counterparts. Both have advantages, but the unlicensed option may be best for budget conscious organizations that would benefit from IoT solutions.

The Cost

The ISM band is unlicensed, so there is no cost associated with using the band. While the alternative, cellular, offers some technical and infrastructure advantages, it comes with a monthly cost per device. Each sensor in a cellular network would require a data subscription to the user's carrier of choice. The advantage here is that the cellular provider takes care of the network infrastructure and may offer (at additional cost) some options for the maintenance of end devices. The unlicensed option, operating on bands typically used for non-communication applications, only requires the acceptance of the fact that your device will be subject to any spurious emissions from other transmitters operating in the band. And, in addition, you would own the end devices, and the network infrastructure.

So why take on ownership of this network? ISM allows you subscription-free high-performance wireless communication when cellular costs are not practical - either due to the size of the organization implementing it (too small), or the size of the application (too large). This makes ISM band LPWAN solutions well suited for governments with tight budgets and large domains that want to implement smart city or smart building applications to further optimize the use of their already limited assets. It also allows small to medium size businesses easier access to sophisticated technologies that will help them make critical (money-saving) decisions with data that they, otherwise, could not afford to collect.

The Performance

The ISM band, being reserved by the FCC for applications ranging from microwave heating to military radar, is open to any device for communication purposes. In fact, it's use is quite common. The band covers technologies such as cordless phones, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, near field communications, and more. The caveat with operating on ISM, is that the device must tolerate any potential interference from others using the band. Fortunately, many modulation techniques have been developed that obviate the need for concern. For a classic example of this - think about that "spread spectrum" sticker on your early 2000s cordless phone.

IoT applications use much more sophisticated techniques. One such method is called chirp spread spectrum (CSS). With CSS, information is encoded using a frequency "chirp" - Each bit of information, 1 or 0, is represented by a quick, continuous, and predictable up or down-tick in frequency. This rate of frequency change is known thus allowing the receiver to decode it without additional information in the signal.

CSS uses all allocated bandwidth making it very robust to noise. It resists multi-path fading (the result of transmitted signal being reflected from multiple objects before arriving at the receiver) and negative effects from the Doppler effect - experienced when one or more of the transceivers are in motion. The combination of these advantages makes encoding schemes like CSS well suited for deployments that require low-power, transmission in and around buildings, and applications like asset tracking where at least one of the devices will be moving.

If you are concerned signal range will suffer without the use of cell towers, many ISM technologies in IoT make use of sub-GHz frequencies which are less easily absorbed by water and oxygen in the atmosphere and less subject to reflection from conductive materials. Coupled with signal transmission techniques such as CSS that significantly increase the ability of a device to decode noisy, reflecting signals, these features make for excellent signal coverage both in and outdoors. And, that brings added range which means the user will need fewer gateways - typically the costliest part of the wireless network. Although the gateway is not needed for cellular networks, it becomes an advantage when you wish to deploy in a region where you may not have a nearby cell tower – say in agriculture deployments such as vineyards, cattle ranches, and orchards.

Conclusion

LPWAN systems using the ISM band play an important role in the IoT ecosystem. There’s no subscription needed which allows a lower cost of entry for organizations with limited budgets and large deployment needs, they use sophisticated modulation techniques that make them ideal for urban and asset tracking applications, and they have long-range capability coupled with great urban and indoor signal penetration which leads to fewer needed gateways. ISM band systems offer a solution where cellular coverage is too expensive or too spotty.

Updates to Google's Nearby Notifications have been fully released and they promise to enrich the physical shopping experience for all Android users with meaningful contextual notifications - just in time for the holiday season.

Noteworthy Notification

Notifications are now smarter, providing a better experience for both users and developers.

Google's algorithms now gauge notification usefulness using quality signals and user engagement data. Not only will this help eliminate “spammy” feeling interactions for users, it also means that developers no longer need to apply for whitelisting. Instead, high-quality notifications will be boosted in prominence, while less-valuable notifications, and those without significant usage data, will default to lower or minimum priority.

Command Control

That unsubscribe link that helps declutter your inbox now has its analog in Nearby Notifications' muting function. Users can now command even more control over app interactions with a mute button directly embedded within its notifications. This allows one-tap quashing of spammy or uninteresting app messages.

Learn More

We’re excited by these new changes which will not only make development with Google Nearby easier, but also encourage high-quality applications that give users greater value. For more information, please visit https://developers.google.com/nearby/

Interview with SENSORO at the IoT Tech Expo 2016 in Santa Clara, CA. Thanks to Buyzz for talking with us about our Alpha technology! Check out the video below:

Industries in every sector are expected to use data from Internet of Things (IoT) networks to develop more competitive strategies. This fact has driven predictions of extreme demand for the devices and networks necessary to collect the critical data needed to make sound business decision in the modern market.

According to the Semiconductor and Electronics journal’s Aug 2016 issue “The IoT sensors market is expected to grow from USD 3.34 billion in 2015 to USD 38.41 billion by 2022.” The article explains that the market is being driven by “increase in demand for IoT sensors in various applications.”

Santa Clara, Calif. – Oct. 21, 2016 – Sensoro Inc. presented their vision of rapidly deployable IoT sensor networks at the IoT Tech Conference in Santa Clara. Sensoro has completed performance testing of their Alpha Product Suite – their long-range low-power sensor network hardware – in densely populated metropolitan areas. The global company, which began by providing large scale beacon marketing systems which require proximity management revealed their IoT network solutions at the IoT Tech Conference. A spokesperson for Sensoro shared the company’s vision for large, robust IoT sensor networks that are easily deployed and simple to manage and scale:

“There is growing need from a variety of organizations for quickly deployable, scalable IoT sensor networks which can be centrally managed while providing access to mission critical data for storage and analysis.”

Sensoro Inc. has over 350,000 devices operating in over 72 countries and is committed to developing wireless solutions to help people live smarter lives in a better environment. Sensoro can be followed on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. To learn more about their technology, please visit www.sensoro.com

Large cities all face common challenges: mitigating air, ground, and water pollution; wrangling power distribution; keeping an eye on their infrastructures and keeping them running. There is also a myriad of other problems: undercutting crime, making the environment safe for citizens, and minimizing the city’s liability and the load on police, fire, medical, and maintenance personnel.

However, each metropolis is unique in how these problems manifest. Take Beijing. Over 528 square miles packed with well over 18 million people. No easy place to keep up having been organically grown for 3000 years to a global-class metropolis – 3rd most populous on the planet. With Beijing’s unique culture comes unique needs and that’s were our most recent challenge comes in – and it starts quite literally on the ground floor.

Challenge

The wet season bring driving rain in the streets of Beijing, giving partial reprieve from the atmospheric pollution that China urbanite have come to endure. With that relief comes a price and what was airborne now floods the streets turning regions of the city into a mini-Venice. Well almost. The helpful citizens throughout these regions take it upon themselves to do something about this – and open the drains. Manholes – they’re heavy. But that doesn’t stop the rugged Beijing denizen. Unfortunately, this sometimes does little to help, the subterranean space filling, and then disappearing, below a sheet of water. It’s here the mayhem starts. First the cars - bravely skimming along until a wheel drops into the hole and causes a major accident. Pedestrians, trudging their way across streets have also fallen into the puddle-like openings; in some cases, this has cost life – and that is where IoT solutions aren’t just nice - they become necessary.

Solution

There’s no way for city personnel to check every manhole in a city this size. But, they can install a sensor on each one once and wait for an alert when – not if – a cover is opened. Then it’s just a matter of relaying that information to the closest worker. All that is needed is a robust sensor and a reliable network to communicate across. That is where SENSORO Inc believes they can help. In fact, they already are. Last month, SENSORO, with the approval of Beijing city government and the cooperation of locally operating telecom companies, deployed a large network of long-range, low-power sensors (over 350) with motion detectors that watch for opening covers. These sensors relay their reports to one of four SENSORO base stations, which are each capable of handling up to 1000 sensors within a 2-mile radius of skyscraper-studded terrain. The high ratio of base station to sensor is to allow for future expansion of the IoT system, but we’ll talk about that more later.

The challenges in using below grade sensors are two – it has to be tough and it needs to talk through concrete and steel. SENSORO ruggedized the housing and adapted the antenna to direct its power out from, not into, the manhole. This ensured a reliable signal that could be detected at the base stations, four of which were mounted high on Nokia telecommunication towers throughout Beijing.

Conclusion

Getting approval to setup and wireless sensor network in Beijing is not an easy task. It requires clearance from government officials - and that can be tedious to obtain. There is also added complexity of working with multiple telecommunications providers. The city government, and the telecom companies, saw the value that SENSORO’s technology contributes to city management and life safety and green-lighted the project which is to be fully deployed next Spring (2017) in Beijing, Guizhou, and Zhengzhou. SENSORO’s technology is also expected to monitor flood levels and track pets as well as people. This would bring enhanced safety to children and some seniors who may require continual care due to health issues. Future expansion will also bring remote street light management and another critical application in developing Chinese cities – environmental monitoring.