LoRaWAN Smart Water metering management system architecture
This article covers LoRaWAN smart water management system. It describes various elements of LoRaWAN smart water metering architecture. It mentions advantages or benefits of LoRaWAN smart water meter.
Introduction:
Water is a very useful resource for every human beings.
There is scarcity of water in some areas of the Earth.
Human beings have developed smart meters and its management system
with the help of latest wireless technologies and IoT in order to
reduce its wastage/usage to help improve its supply and consumption.
LoRaWAN is one such LPWAN (i.e. Low Power Wide Area Network) technology.
LoRaWAN is a RF technology which works on various frequency bands across the world viz. 868 MHz, 915 MHz, 433 MHz etc. It uses various bandwidths to support different data rates as per need.
LoRaWAN uses various protocol architectures such as mesh, star, 6LowPAN etc. The system supports many silent features such as long range (about 10 to 30 miles), low power (provides 15-20 years of battery life time), high capacity ( millions of messages per gateway) and so on. Moreover LoRaWAN provides privacy and protection against intrusion due to usage of AES-128 algorithm.
LoRaWAN smart water management system architecture
The figure-1 depicts simple architecture of LoRaWAN smart water management system. As shown it consists of smart meters, LoRa Gateway (i.e. base station), Cloud storage and applications..
Multiple LoRaWAN smart meters are supported by single LoRa Gateway device. Multiple LoRa gateways are spread across the region to provide wireless connectivity.
LoRa gateways are interfaced with the cloud or network server using standard IP based communication. Mobile app or web app is used to monitor the water supply, usage and any blockage issues.
Following section describes working of LoRaWAN smart water management system.
➨As shown, smart meters are installed in the path between water supply department and taps.
➨Smart meters are connected with LoRaWAN gateways using LoRaWAN frequencies wirelessly.
➨The LoRaWAN gateway connects with Cloud using MQTT or HTTP protocols.
➨The water usage data are pushed to the cloud.
➨The data are read from cloud storage and displayed on mobile app or web app.
LoRaWAN smart water meter
Following are the typical specifications of LoRaWAN smart water meter.
• Opto-port for reading by humans
• Data collection at every 1/6/12/24 Hours
• Data transmission at every 1/6/12/24 Hours
• Battery power upto 10 to 15 years
• Range: as per lora which is about 15 Km with frequency
of 923 MHz and class-A
• Extra feature: Ambient temperature measurement
Benefits or advantages of LoRaWAN Smart water metering
Following are the benefits or advantages of LoRaWAN Smart water metering.
➨It helps in generating transparent bills for consumers.
➨It notifies leakage of the water and hence water wastage can be minimized.
➨It produces real time infrastructure data.
➨Consumers obtain water usage data via mobile app or web app.
Hence it enhances responsibilities of the consumers to save water.
➨As consumers have account of water usage on daily basis, they can take
action to save water and money.
➨The system offers integrated resource management and sustainable solution.
➨Smart meters offer longer life and hence users need not have to worry about
replacing the battery often. There are many more advantages of smart meters such as
flexible to mount, smaller size, larger display, dirt resistant, nature friendly, flood proof,
magnet resistant and so on.
Refer popular manufacturers of smart meters >>.
LoRaWAN Related Links
Main page LoRa tutorial
LoRa Frequency Bands
LoRa protocol stack
LoRa MAC layer
LoRaWAN classes
LoRa features
LoRa Transceiver module