Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IISContact Press / Media
Dipl.-Ing. Ferdinand Kemeth
Gruppenleiter Effiziente Kommunikation
Nordostpark 84
90411 Nürnberg
Safe even without a network thanks to mioty®
While working alone in the basement of a large facility or outdoors on an industrial site, a service technician falls and is in need of rapid assistance. In the event of an accident at work, many lone workers rely heavily on their emergency being noticed quickly so that rescue operations can be initiated. This is usually the work of digital systems that detect emergencies automatically even in critical areas and send out an emergency call and alerts. What happens, however, if an emergency takes place in an area with weak or no radio coverage? What happens if distress calls go unheeded because the wireless systems have neither the range nor sufficient real-time capabilities or due to interference from other radio systems?
Together with Swissphone Wireless, our radio experts are working on a reliable wireless protection system with built-in area alerting for lone workers. Our solution is based on a low-power, wide-area network (LPWAN) connection called mioty®. Many current wireless technologies, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or DECT, have limited communication ranges, leaving them unable to cover large buildings or areas without the installation of costly additional network infrastructure.
Long-range and highly robust lone worker protection
Thanks to its extension and the incorporation of hundreds of thousands of sensors via one base station, our mioty® LPWAN technology sets new standards for the installation and successive expansion of alarm systems. We also achieve an outdoor range of up to 15 kilometers from the sensors to the nearest base station. Using the specially integrated telegram splitting method patented by our team, data is split into smaller packets and then sent to the base station redundantly in staggered transmissions over multiple frequencies. Interference from other systems transmitting in the same frequency band, which would lead to the complete loss of information in previous systems, is negligible. Thanks to special channel coding, mioty® transmission remains completely reliable even if 50% of messages are lost. This is hugely advantageous, particularly in an emergency.
In an emergency, lone workers depend on a fast and reliably functioning alarm system. By incorporating mioty® wireless technology, Fraunhofer IIS has developed a powerful radio solution in collaboration with Swissphone Wireless.
Two-way alerts also possible with LPWAN
Specific guidelines stipulate the time within which an alert must reach the recipients. This is made possible by low latency and almost simultaneous two-way alerts via the up - and downlink in the extended mioty® protocol. In turn, this paves the way for rapid communication from a fall sensor or alarm button to the infrastructure, for example, as well as from the infrastructure to first responders or special signaling units (multicast).
Greater safety in industrial settings
Wireless communication and positioning systems equipped with mioty® are also a potential solution in industrial settings because their wirelessly networked, energy-efficient, or self-sufficient sensors and actuators also operate reliably with our protocol in such applications. These systems continue to work even in highly metallic environments with strong radio reflections or in the absence of radio coverage, like in a cellar room. Thanks to energy harvesting, it is also possible to operate extremely energy-efficient sensors self-sufficiently with no need for a battery.
Together with wireless, high-precision positioning, the combination of these technologies offers significant improvements in lone worker protection and ensures that first responders are on site as quickly as possible.
Safe even without a network thanks to mioty®
