LoRA based, low power remote monitoring and control solution for Industry 4.0 factories and facilities

Over the years, industrial automation has repeatedly been impacted by the continuous and tremendous evolution in the fields of computer systems, electronics and data transmission. Industry 4.0, the current wave of the industrial revolution- dubbed the data revolution -, integrates these advances in communication and computational systems with the Internet, resulting in a paradigm shift towards the (Industrial) Internet of Things. Automation systems and remote data acquisition systems evolved over the last years from classic solutions based on wired infrastructure to modern, flexible solutions bringing together wireless communications, battery powered devices and wireless sensors networks. In this paper we first define the main problems encountered in modern wireless automation systems - small distance limitations of wireless communication solutions, weak security or complete lack of security in data transmission, and high energy consumption of battery powered remote data acquisition systems. In order to address these limitations, we propose, implement, trial-run and benchmark a novel low power LoRa-based flexible hardware architecture for use in industrial remote monitoring and control. We obtain a LoS capability above 3km and a calculated autonomy of about 10 years, exceeding the capabilities of current State of the Art solutions.