In the petrochemical industry, the lorawan vibration sensor used at Shell’s Rotterdam Refinery achieves a 1.2-kilometer transmission with a transmission power of +14dBm. The CR2450 battery has an 8.3-year lifespan, and it saves 62% on maintenance expense in comparison to the traditional 4-20mA wired solution. The operation statistics of 2023 show that the bit error rate of the device remains constant at 0.03% in the high-temperature condition of 85℃. However, in crowded areas where metal pipes are used, the rate of signal weakening will rise to 3.2dB/m from 0.8dB/m, and a relay gateway should be inserted at every 300 meters. According to the IEEE 1451.4 standard testing, when the sampling rate is increased from 1Hz to 10Hz, the power consumed by the device increases from 18μA to 152μ A. The duty cycle must be maximized up to 0.1% to maintain the battery life.
Actual test cases in the automotive manufacturing industry show that the lorawan torque sensor in Bosch German factory is averaging only 2.4KB per day data flow with measurement accuracy of ±0.05Nm. Using the SF12 spread spectrum factor setting, battery life can be up to 11 years. Under the 95dB noise environment of the welding factory, FHSS frequency hopping technology was employed to constrain the data packet loss rate to 0.7%. The reflection on the metallic surface continued to make the standard deviation of RSSI changes up to ±8.3dB, and the IMU data needed to be integrated for position compensation. The ABI Research report indicates that this solution has boosted the speed of fault diagnosis on the production line to 8 seconds, 17 times as fast as the Zigbee solution.
The particular requirements of power system monitoring have verified the reliability of lorawan. The partial discharge sensor of State Grid in the ±800kV converter station maintains a detection sensitivity of 0.1pC under 50kA electromagnetic interference. The equipment uses a dual-band redundancy design (868MHz/915MHz). In the state of -40℃, the attenuation rate of battery capacity drops from 28% to 9%, and the annual maintenance cost reduces by 410,000 US dollars. However, IEC 61850-9-2 standard tests show that once 200 nodes are stimulated simultaneously, the processing delay of the gateway will increase to 980ms from the initial 120ms, and edge computing will have to be done in order to preprocess 60% of the data volume.
Hygiene standard protocols employed in the food processing industry show that lorawan temperature sensors for Nestle’s Swiss plant have passed the IP69K protection rating and have an error rate of just 0.02% when put through high-pressure washing (80℃ hot water, 10Bar). The unit has a capacity to handle two samplings per second with a 0.1℃ resolution. The CR2477 battery lasts 6.8 years in an 85% humidity environment and is 94% more power efficient compared to the Wi-Fi solution. According to the FDA audit report, when the proportion of metal shelves in cold storage is over 70%, the median signal strength will fall from -82 DBM to -107 DBM, and the gateway antenna polarization direction needs to be altered to gain full coverage.
Severe environment tests for mine safety monitoring proved that the lorawan gas sensors at BHP Billiton’s Western Australia iron mine have achieved a data completeness level of 99.99% through intrinsic safety certification under a 5%VOL concentration environment of methane. The product utilises energy harvesting technology and possesses an ability to maintain an A working current of 0.8μA under 0.3m/s of wind speed without battery replacement. But the CSIRO research indicates that if the road curvature is greater than 35°, the multipath behavior of the 915MHz signal will increase the positioning error from ±3 meters to ±22 meters, and there must be a trilateral measurement beacon array implemented for correction.