eMoorings: Distributed low power wide area system to control moorings

Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks present a new communication paradigm in wireless sensor networks. Their ability to convey information over larger geographical areas, while still enabling low-power consumption and longer lifetime, gives them a special place in realization of Internet of Things (IoT) systems and applications. Compared to traditional cellular networks and other short range technologies (WiFi, Bluetooth or ZigBee), LPWA systems rely on reduced complexity and cost of end sensor devices, and higher complexity of centralized systems. In this paper we present eMoorings, a system of distributed sensors to control moorings in marinas. The delay tolerant feature of sensor devices connected to rope of mooring allows us to implement low cost and low power consumption sensor device active only a small fraction of time while being inactive most of the time. The simultaneous and robust monitoring of a large number of moorings — more than 100 is based on the centralized system that handles and coordinates communication activities of all sensor devices in the network. We implemented the proposed system with off-the-shelf components such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi and tested the reliability of the system in laboratory environment.