A low-power wireless UHF/LF sensor network with web-based remote supervision — Implementation in the intelligent container

Vegetables, fruits and fish are very sensitive to variations in environmental conditions. To avoid a significant waste of goods during transportation the temperature and the humidity have to be set close to a predetermined point by the cooling unit of the container. Continuous and precise monitoring of physical parameters is therefore an important task to reduce the amount of spoiled goods. To supervise the container status the monitored data have to be evaluated and transmitted to the end-user. A graphical interface enables the setting and analysis of essential parameters and the supervision of the load quality. In this paper a low-power UHF / LF sensor system with a web-based remote supervision is presented. The system consists of wireless low power sensor nodes, a base station and corresponding antennas. A supervision unit is implemented for freight quality monitoring and for transmitting commands to dedicated sensor IDs. A web-based interface in combination with a virtual private network is used to establish a connection to the container and to control relevant parameters and evaluate data acquired by the sensor nodes.