Fast and secure data transmission is becoming increasingly important in logistics. Existing communication infrastructure is a fundamental prerequisite for this. To test how reliable various communication networks are, researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML) joined forces with DACHSER and the European Pallet Association (EPAL) to conduct a pan-European study. To this end, they equipped 50 EPAL Euro pallets with trackers and sent them on a journey across Europe.
The result of the study is over 148,000 kilometers traveled in one month to examine the coverage of telecommunications networks along the routes taken. Their availability across the entire area is important, for example, for IoT (Internet of Things) devices that transmit regularly updated sensor data. As part of the study, five trackers were installed on each of the 50 EPAL Euro pallets – each using a different technology. They were then sent to 24 EU countries via the DACHSER logistics center in Dortmund.
Each of the tracking devices uses a different communication network. These include radio technologies such as LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network), among which NB-IoT, LTE-M, and Sigfox technologies were considered. NB-IoT and LTE-M broadcast on a licensed cellular frequency compatible with 5G, while Sigfox operates in an unlicensed spectrum. In addition, the researchers analyzed classic second and third-generation (2G/3G) cellular networks. The individual technologies differ, among other things, in terms of data transmission speed, frequency range, energy consumption, and coverage. After a month, the pallets returned to Fraunhofer IML, and the researchers were able to evaluate the technologies used based on over two million data transmissions.
– The study shows that classic 2G and 3G cellular networks still have the greatest availability across Europe. However, their disadvantage is that they are being partially phased out, allow for fewer accesses per radio cell, and have higher energy consumption, so trackers operate for a shorter time – says Patrick Becker, a research associate at Fraunhofer IML.
For modern logistics applications, where a large amount of sensor data is contained in small transmission packets, LPWAN networks are a better solution. They are still in a phase of constant expansion, but they already offer area-wide network availability in some cases today.
LPWAN technologies are the future
For logistics IoT applications that require continuous reception throughout Europe, researchers from Fraunhofer IML therefore recommend a combination of LPWAN technologies (NB-IoT, LTE-M, Sigfox) and classic mobile communication (2G-4G). Only in this way, in their opinion, can pan-European data transmission be guaranteed at present (as of 09/2021). Nevertheless, the future of connectivity for IoT devices lies in LPWAN technology.
Source: Dachser