IIoT based Electrical Asset Management System: A LoRaWan Deployment Study at Shipyard

With the Internet of Things (IoT) being a key enabler for Industry 4.0, newer wireless communication technologies for IoT networks promise to achieve a higher communication range with lower power consumption compared to legacy communication systems like Wi-Fi. In this paper, an IIoT - based solution - CoastaL (Condition monitoring for electrical asset and Localization) - is proposed using Long Range WAN (LoRaWAN) technology and deployed in a shipyard spanning across 206 hectares for condition monitoring and localization of electrical assets. The paper presents a comprehensive comparison study of various Low Power WAN (LPWAN) technologies to determine a suitable technology for the CoastaL system. LoRaWAN is the only LPW AN technology that allows a private network implementation and does not require subscriptions while offering high range and cost efficiency as opposed to Sigfox and NB-IoT. The performance of the CoastaL system is measured as a function of receiver signal strength indicator (RSSI) which is based on the distance from the gateway. Using the collected measurement data, an empirical formula on the RSSI was formulated to estimate the signal strength of LoRaWAN devices at shipyards and similar environments.