mioty^® for Smart Metering at Munich Airport

The FutureIOT joint research project develops IoT solutions for practical challenges in the “City.digital” and “Agriculture.digital” project domains. Robust radio transmission is provided by the mioty^® LPWAN technology.

Background

What characterizes large sites such as airports is that they not only cover a particularly broad area, but they also feature a very high number of sensors and various radio signals. Covering an area of 15.75 km², the Franz Josef Strauss Airport in Munich has thousands of water meters. Produced by different manufacturers and belonging to different generations, these meters previously had to be read manually, which was time-consuming and labor-intensive. To reduce this cost point and ensure stable transmission of the meter readings, the airport wanted an efficient solution.

Solution

As part of the environmental sensor technology subproject in the “City.digital” project domain, the FutureIOT joint research project is building an IoT infrastructure at Munich’s Franz Josef Strauss Airport based on standardized mioty^® technology. For this purpose, three fixed base stations were installed and several water meters were equipped with sensors. The meter readings are transmitted hourly to a central platform via mioty^® using end-to-end data encryption. The three mioty® base stations provide complete and stable coverage of the entire open area of Munich Airport.

Benefits

The advantages of mioty^® technology include robustness against external and internal interference, simple and cost-effective retrofitting of existing systems, and the collection of data on a central platform. Because the technology is so energy-efficient, its batteries can last for a period of several years. This means the IoT infrastructure that has been set up helps detect leaks at an early stage, reduce costs (e.g. for manual meter reading), and provide impetus for further optimization.

Robust data transmission for sensors, which in the future will number up to one million across the entire airport site, enables many other applications. For example, evaluating the readings from additional sensors (e.g. temperature sensors) will help optimize the operation of technical systems. Furthermore, the mioty^® technology could also be used to track mobile assets, such as vehicles or trailers.