Evaluation of LPWAN Technologies for Smart Cities: River Monitoring Use-case

This paper presents the results of the joint Intel/Nimbus Low Power-Wide Area (LPWA) technology PoC deployment in smart cities context. The PoC deployment addresses the problem of river Liffey monitoring in Dublin city center. We deployed a buoy on the Liffey river in Dublin for duration of 8 months. The deployed buoy embeds many sensors inside the hull enclosure and outside. The data captured is, from the water: depth, temperature and velocity; from inside the hull: temperature, humidity and barometric pressure; from the GPS unit: location and timestamp; and from the system: battery voltage. The buoy also embeds a LoRa-based LPWA transceiver and a 3G modem for backup. The paper gives an insight of the results obtained in terms of range and data consistency and gives conclusions on the use of LPWA technologies in the context of smart cities.