Feb 09, 2022A global consortium of technology companies has announced that it is releasing a solution for terrestrial and satellite asset tracking based on LoRaWAN technology. The organization, known as the Multimodal IoT Infrastructure Consortium (MMIIC), plans to pilot the system in a global supply chain environment beginning in February 2022. The group formed to provide connectivity everywhere, including in hard-to-reach places, such as at sea, in rural areas, in mines, or at oil and gas fields. The solution leverages terrestrial LoRaWAN devices with firmware that shifts communication to satellite technology in those more remote locations.
The consortium consists of TrakAssure, which provides the tracking devices and full application solution; Senet, which offers LoRaWAN connectivity; satellite company Eutelsat; and Wyld Networks, which builds the sensor technology and firmware being used in this solution. MMIIC (pronounced "mimic") was formed to advance LoRaWAN network coverage and optimize supply chains, according to the participants. The companies are targeting the global supply chain, including container logistics and related asset tracking, as the first application. However, other use cases include monitoring utility poles for energy companies around the world, as well as the delivery of goods into rural locations, and agricultural applications.
Senet will provide terrestrial connectivity and Eutelsat satellites coverage through its Extended Coverage offering, which will be added to Senet's existing gateway coverage and partnership with Helium, as well as Eutelsat's satellite coverage, according to Bruce Chatterley, Senet's CEO. Helium provides connectivity via crowd-sourced hotspots so that it can extend coverage to Senet and other companies beyond their existing gateway infrastructure.
Eutelsat's nanosatellites bring LoRaWAN coverage to devices where no terrestrial network is available. TrakAssure and Wyld are partnering on the creation of a new sensor-enabled end device for the supply chain and asset tracking. TrakAssure will then offer the complete solutions to its customers, including software to manage the collected data. Piloting is slated to begin in February 2022, with commercial release planned for the second half of this year.
The MMIIC technical testing and pilots will leverage data capture by the first ELO (an acronym for "Eutelsat low-Earth orbit [LEO] for objects") nanosatellites, which Eutelsat launched in 2021. By 2024, the company expects to have launched approximately 25 such satellites. That, says Luc Perard, Eutelsat's IoT senior VP, would be sufficient to transmit asset-location data via satellite at least once hourly for those who require updates that frequently, as well as to accommodate the transmission of several billion points of data annually.
Bruce Chatterley
Eutelsat is a 45-year-old French satellite company that is now venturing into the Internet of Things (IoT) space with its ELO service. Satellite coverage provides a benefit for hard-to-reach places in LoRaWAN solutions, Perard says, but only if the data network can be relatively inexpensive. "Satellite [technology] can address the challenge of coverage," he explains, "but let's not reinvent the wheel by creating new satellite technologies or proprietary stuff." Instead, Perard adds, the company decided, "Let's reuse those existing technology and just extend them."
The solution follows the LoRaWAN international standard, Perard says, which was formally recognized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in December 2021 and requires limited modifications to the sensors so they can transmit messages via either a terrestrial or satellite network. "The idea," he states, "is to make it completely integrated, interoperable and seamlessly integrated." Once the MMIIC solution is commercialized, Chatterley says, the team expects to plan and deliver additional solutions designed to extend the adoption of LoRaWAN connectivity into markets that can benefit from the combination of LEO satellites and terrestrial network connectivity.
For the past few years, Senet has been deploying its LoRaWAN network via gateways throughout North America, as well as in other parts of the globe as requested by customers. The company has brought connectivity to many urban locations in the United States, though other rural areas have not yet been connected. "We've been building this network for years," Chatterley says, "and we've got a good chunk of the country covered, but we need other strategies to get all the nooks and crannies."
Luc Perard
The use of these low-Earth orbit satellites is still more costly than gateway-based systems. Therefore, MMIIC's solution is built to switch automatically between terrestrial and satellite networks as needed. For a typical supply chain application, the TrakAssure sensor-enabled end device could be applied to a container at the point of manufacture as goods are being loaded into a truck. That container could then be tracked via terrestrial gateways as it is transported to a port and onto a vessel.
Once the vessel was at sea, the system might use Eutelsat's ELO service when no terrestrial LoRaWAN network was in sight. Then, when it arrived at the destination port, LoRaWAN gateways installed there would again employ terrestrial-based data. The container could be tracked all the way to its final destination, somewhere beyond the port, using Senet's gateway coverage, Helium's network or Senet's Low-Power Wide-Area Virtual Network (LVN) coverage, leveraging connectivity from additional Senet network users.
Those tracking cargo, such as a brand, manufacturer or shipping company, can view the location, condition and status of each container, and thus the cargo it contains, in real time via TrakAssure's software. They can also receive alerts—for instance, if sensor data indicates the presence of moisture, or if a container has experienced a shock, such as being dropped. In some cases, the technology could leverage a single LoRaWAN gateway on a shipping vessel that would capture all sensor data from the container sensors. That gateway could then forward data via satellite.
Beyond logistics, the consortium will explore other applications as well, such as condition monitoring for utility companies seeking to maintain their electrical poles, some of which can be easily connected to LoRaWAN gateways, as well as others that are more remote. In this way, the company explains, users could monitor conditions such as whether or not the poles were standing vertically, or if the temperature were to rise, which could indicate a fire.
There are also agricultural applications, according to the company—for instance, the tracking of seeds that are patented and must be monitored, through multiple channels, to the field in which they are planted. "I think LoRaWAN has proven that it's a technology that's here to stay now," Chatterley states, "and it's scaling dramatically." With more ubiquitous coverage via satellite, he adds, "I would say that we now have a compelling value proposition overall, versus competitive services like cellular."
In the meantime, Eutelsat is working with other LoRaWAN providers as well to build its satellite-based connectivity into their systems. Initially, the ELO nanosatellites are operating with LoRaWAN transmissions, and they could also receive Sigfox signals, though that is not part of the MMIIC solution at this time. In the future, other IoT technologies—such as narrowband IoT (NB-IOT) or LTE-M-based systems—could employ similar satellites. Companies that see an additional market potential, Perard says, "can go and address use cases that they could not address before."
