The perception that satellite communications are expensive and exclusive to critical use cases is changing as the technology develops, said Liz Wilson, Global Marketing Director at Ground Control, in a conversation with IoT Insider at IoT Tech Expo Global, as the talking points revolved around the use cases, the potential of satellites, and the importance of standardisation.
Ground Control was present to show off the hardware they manufacture for their customers who can then connect to existing satellite constellations with it. This included their RockREMOTE Mini OEM, a subassembly that transmits data using the Iridium Certus 100 service via TCP/IP messaging or Iridium Messaging Transport.
“You would implement a device like this inside your enclosure, it would need an external antenna,” said Wilson. “It has some limited Edge computing capabilities as well, so it can report an exception, rather than having to send data every single time it receives data. With satellite, you’re generally trying to compress the cost together.”
Ground Control also offers a platform which allows the user to take that message data, interpret it and reformat it for immediate use. “You can either send it out to HTTP webhook, or you can send it via email, or you can plug it straight into IoT dashboards,” explained Wilson. “Effectively, it’s a low-code, local solution which allows people to get going with this quickly and with less engineering.”
For flood monitoring and other applications
Satellite communications are finding their value in industries that previously would not have had devices with a secure, stable connection. One example can be found in environmental sensing, more specifically for the utilities industry.
“One of the key things in utilities, especially in the States, is that they’re trying to prevent wildfires,” said Wilson. “You’ve got these enormous pylons which are carrying power. If they fall, they are the cause of a lot of wildfires in the States.
“What you can do is attach a satellite transceiver to those pylons, and they will tell you if the temperature starts to rise past a certain point, [from] which you can infer a fire is starting.”
Currently, most applications are mission critical, such as asset tracking, or for natural disaster detection like flooding.
“One of our customers has tsunami alerts set off the coast of Thailand after the Boxing Day disaster that will detect signs of tsunami in sufficient time for coastal regions to be evacuated,” said Wilson.
The Boxing Day disaster, in 2004, devastated communities along the coasts of the Indian Ocean and was reportedly the worst natural disaster of the 21st century. “This is a matter of many thousands of lives,” Wilson added.
Another customer of Ground Control’s, RWE, a supplier of renewable energy, has transitioned into using satellite to replace what was previously manual checking of reservoirs located in Snowdon, Wales, to calculate how much water to send through their piping and to generate power.
“Because it’s in the middle of Snowdonia, there’s no cellular infrastructure,” Wilson said. “They were sending someone up into the Welsh mountains to measure the water. They then installed weather stations which measure water level, rainfall, and humidity. Not only do they know exactly when to open the pipes more, but they can also prevent flooding.
“You need satellite in that instance for the reliability, for the connectivity, for the security, because it’s critical national infrastructure.”
Wilson said this was a crystallising moment where the role of satellite communications began to make complete sense.
Standardisation
A current constraint of satellite communications Wilson pointed out was to do with standardisation: “One of the chaps from Skylo made the point that they are somewhat trying to shoehorn a cellular standard into satellite, and what Skylo have done is a lot of clever engineering to make it work, but it’s far from perfect. That’s Release 17.”
Release 18 is imminent, while Iridium is working with the GSMA on Release 19.
“I don’t think it’s immediate,” said Wilson. “I think we’re looking at a couple of years before we start to see the real promise of 3GPP … I think it’s going to end up with a dual cluster service [where] you’ll still have the proprietary stuff for critical applications, because it was hand-designed to go through the satellite versus something that is a little compromised.”
Wilson noted that the development in satellite communications was only “good news”, referencing under-developed countries who are at risk from flooding and other natural disasters owing to climate change that could significantly benefit from using satellites.
“The big push was to have the standard space stuff in 3GPP. That’s not here yet, or it’s here in a very limited capacity,” she explained. “You don’t yet have the promise of supplier switching, suppressing rates, [the] very low cost of hardware. It’s coming, but it’s not there yet.”
“I believe in the near future there’s going to be a new class of satellite IoT that’s low cost and will allow people to connect things that [they] wouldn’t have connected before because it was cost prohibitive,” Wilson concluded.
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