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LPWAN based IoT Architecture for Distributed Energy Monitoring in Deep Indoor Environments

Christof Röhrig, Benz Cramer

TL;DR

This paper assesses the penetration performance of four LPWAN technologies (LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, Sigfox 0G, Wi-SUN) for energy monitoring in deep indoor and underground environments. It uses an empirical, RSSI-based measurement campaign to quantify building-penetration-loss (BPL) across indoor, outdoor-to-indoor, basements, and tunnels, revealing that path geometry often outweighs pure technology choice. The authors propose a distributed hybrid IoT architecture with an abstraction layer that decodes proprietary data to JSON and enables MQTT-based publish-subscribe messaging across multiple LPWAN interfaces. The architecture is implemented for LoRaWAN and NB-IoT and demonstrated in Dortmund university buildings, highlighting practical considerations for deploying energy metering in challenging environments. The findings guide selecting LPWANs for deep indoor energy monitoring and motivate hybrid architectures to optimize coverage and cost.

Abstract

Continuous energy monitoring is essential for identifying potential savings and predicting the energy requirements of buildings. Energy meters are often located in underground spaces that are difficult to reach with wireless technology. This paper presents an experimental study comparing different Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) technologies in terms of building penetration and radio coverage. The technologies Low Power Long Range Wide Area Networks (LoRaWAN), Narrow Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT), Sigfox 0G and Wireless Smart Ubiquitous Networks (Wi-SUN) are evaluated experimentally. It also proposes a distributed hybrid IoT architecture that combines multiple LPWAN technologies using an abstraction layer to optimize cost and coverage. Communication is message-based using the publish-subscribe messaging pattern. It is implemented using the MQTT protocol. The abstraction layer decodes the proprietary binary data and converts it to a normalized JSON format.

LPWAN based IoT Architecture for Distributed Energy Monitoring in Deep Indoor Environments

TL;DR

This paper assesses the penetration performance of four LPWAN technologies (LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, Sigfox 0G, Wi-SUN) for energy monitoring in deep indoor and underground environments. It uses an empirical, RSSI-based measurement campaign to quantify building-penetration-loss (BPL) across indoor, outdoor-to-indoor, basements, and tunnels, revealing that path geometry often outweighs pure technology choice. The authors propose a distributed hybrid IoT architecture with an abstraction layer that decodes proprietary data to JSON and enables MQTT-based publish-subscribe messaging across multiple LPWAN interfaces. The architecture is implemented for LoRaWAN and NB-IoT and demonstrated in Dortmund university buildings, highlighting practical considerations for deploying energy metering in challenging environments. The findings guide selecting LPWANs for deep indoor energy monitoring and motivate hybrid architectures to optimize coverage and cost.

Abstract

Continuous energy monitoring is essential for identifying potential savings and predicting the energy requirements of buildings. Energy meters are often located in underground spaces that are difficult to reach with wireless technology. This paper presents an experimental study comparing different Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) technologies in terms of building penetration and radio coverage. The technologies Low Power Long Range Wide Area Networks (LoRaWAN), Narrow Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT), Sigfox 0G and Wireless Smart Ubiquitous Networks (Wi-SUN) are evaluated experimentally. It also proposes a distributed hybrid IoT architecture that combines multiple LPWAN technologies using an abstraction layer to optimize cost and coverage. Communication is message-based using the publish-subscribe messaging pattern. It is implemented using the MQTT protocol. The abstraction layer decodes the proprietary binary data and converts it to a normalized JSON format.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 10 sections, 2 figures, 4 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Problem definition and methodical approach
  3. Related Work
  4. Technology Overview
  5. Experimental evaluation of LPWAN technologies
  6. Experimental setup
  7. Indoor experimental evaluation of LoRaWAN ® and Wi-SUN ®
  8. O2I penetration of LoRaWAN ®, Sigfox OG and NB-IoT
  9. LPWAN architecture
  10. Conclusions

Figures (2)

  • Figure 1: (a) Experimental area at campus Emil-Figge-Str. with measurement points marked in red (b) LoRaWAN ® RSSI values of Gateways at measurement point O2
  • Figure 2: Proposed architecture for energy monitoring and control