Objectives of the service
The service under development will enable cost-effective Smart Water Management using legacy wired sensors and wireless LoRaWAN sensors in areas with no terrestrial network coverage or access to the power grid. Smart Water Management uses IoT sensor technology to remotely monitor and manage the utilization of what is perhaps the world’s most precious resource. The technology is seen as a critical component to improve how efficiently the resource is managed to ensure that future demand by the world’s growing population can be met by detecting leaks, water waste and to address water quality issues at an early stage.
The main problem experienced by the customer prospects involved in the study was the lack of terrestrial network coverage in certain areas where the end user wanted to implement Smart Water Management solution and the lack of network architecture flexibility that current solutions in the marketplace offer. MinFarm Tech’s solution will enable SatCom optimized connectivity for Commercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) sensors using a variety of protocols to connect to the IoT Platform of the end users’ choice in the cloud. The connectivity base station is ruggedized and fully autonomous so it can be deployed anywhere in the world.
Users and their needs
The end users of the solution consist of private and public entities that are interested in the operational, environmental and sustainability gains that Smart Water Management using IoT can provide. MinFarm Tech operates a B2B Business Model and the company’s direct customers consist of IoT System Integrators and resellers and distributors of SatCom Services. The targeted customers that are located in Europe and the Middle East have expressed the following pain points and challenges when trying to implement a Smart Water Management system in remote areas:
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High Satellite airtime costs and connectivity issues when connecting IoT devices via SatCom without protocol optimization
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Requiring different sensors or sensor hardware integration for areas where Satellite coverage is required
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Inability to integrate existing SatCom solutions with data analysis software solution of customer choice
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Limited remote configurability of deployment over satellite
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High costs of transporting staff to the remote sites to collect required data
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Lack of country-specific product certification for hardware solutions
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Increased requirement for remote water management in future due to increased resource scarcity which is expected to get worse in the future
Service/ system concept
The optimized IoT SatCom solution that will be designed and defined within the scope of this project aims to meet the technical and commercial requirements for remote deployments of use cases within IoT based Smart Water Management. The user engagement activities undertaken have identified the following applications as the most critical for remote SatCom based deployments:
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Real-Time water consumption measurement through remote Smart Metering
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Soil moisture monitoring to optimize irrigation decisions
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Remote valve monitoring and management, including opening and closing of valves
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Remote leakage detection
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Remote dam and aquifer monitoring including water quality monitoring and water level monitoring
The system architecture of the developed solution will depend on the sensor density and sensor type of the specific application. The diagram below illustrates the network architecture for a relatively high-density sensor deployment for the soil moisture monitoring use case utilizing wireless sensors operating with the LoRaWAN protocol connecting via the Isat Data Pro Satellite network through MinFarm Tech’s SatCom optimized LoRaWAN Gateway. Once the data is retrieved in the cloud it can be forwarded to the IoT Platform of the end customer’s choice.
Space Added Value
The added value of the Satellite Communication services to the system is that the management of water resources often takes place in remote areas where access to terrestrial coverage may be unreliable or completely unavailable and where it is cost prohibitive to conduct site visits on a regular basis. Deploying terrestrial coverage such as cellular towers for a Smart Water Management project would not be economically viable which leaves SatCom as the optimal connectivity solution for these areas.
Current Status
The current status of the project is that it has ended its kick-start activity. Several user engagement activities have taken place and a service that would address the main pain points raised in these activities has been designed. The project team is currently awaiting funding approval from a strategically significant customer prospect ahead or proceeding to the next phase of product development and verification.
