ENN524 Mobile Network Engineering Assignment 1
All questions must be completed and submitted individually.
Question 1.1 This is a review question that requires you to compare and analyze the characteristics of specific WPAN (Wireless Personal Area Network) and WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) technologies. You should refer to your course lecture notes and relevant literature to gather information for your analysis. Some questions may not have definitive answers, so please provide the best information you can find. Full marks will be awarded for correct answers above 85%.
Question 1.2 This question involves reviewing and comparing the characteristics of selected LPWPAN (Low Power Wireless Personal Area Network) technologies. You are required to refer to your course lecture notes and relevant literature for information. Some questions may not have definitive answers, so provide the best information available. Full marks will be awarded for correct answers above 85%.
This is a review type of question. Review and compare the characteristics of selected LPWPAN
Question 1.3 Call For Proposals: open mine dynamic situation monitoring
This assignment aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of network planning through research, system analysis, and system planning. Your task is to submit a formal proposal in response to a Call for Proposals from ABC Mining, an open mine company seeking to monitor the dynamic situation of the open mine walls and tailing dam using geotechnical, pressure and displacement sensor sets. The company has provided a map of the mine site where around 60 sensor sets can be evenly installed on the walls and dam. The data message size for each sensor set ranges from 3 to 10 kilobits and the transmission rates from 1 to 15 minute per message. Your assignment project is to design a cost-effective automated IoT monitoring system for ABC Mining based on this scenario.
The entire mine site spans about 3x2 squared kilometres. Your proposal should provide ABC Mining’s network service provider with a detailed plan to build the monitoring system. You are required to write up your proposal with about 800 words and list your references. The key aspects to consider in your proposal include:
1) Two possible network solutions based on Wifi-Halow or LoraWAN and NB-IoT respectively, considering the hardware and operational costs of wireless units (wireless modules, Microcomputer unit, gateway/AP for device-network connectivity). Compare the costs and performance of both solutions and select one solution as your proposal and justify the reason for the selected solution.
2) The architecture and topology of the selected network solutions, as well as other components on the site that need to be served
3) Proposal for the edge or cloud computing platform in the monitoring system
4) Security planning and recommendations
5) Summary of the proposal.
Your proposal should address these aspects in detail, providing ABC Mining with a clear roadmap for implementing the monitoring system. You are required to write up your proposal with about 800 words (2 pages), plus a list of references.
Table that compares Bluetooth and various WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) standards across multiple characteristics:
The table table comparing the characteristics of selected LPWPAN (Low Power Wireless Personal Area Network) technologies:
Proposal for IoT-Based Open Mine Dynamic Situation Monitoring System
Even though the mining industry is important in the economic growth, there are various significant risks for the workers as well as the environment. The traditional security methods heavily depend on manual inspection along with static sensor which is not enough to provide the real-time visibility and rapid response to potential hazards for MBA assignment expert Therefore, keeping such factors in consideration, the proposal offers a comprehensive system design depending on IoT for dynamically monitoring open mine conditions, enhancing safety, efficiency and environmental sustainability. However, the main objective of the proposal is to come up with a robust and scalable IoT solution which will help in real-time monitoring of critical parameters like temperature, humidity, gas levels, seismic activity and noise within open mines.
Cost:
• The LoRaWAN devices are usually the most cost-effective among the other two. Additionally, while compare to the NB-IoT, the LoRaWAN and Wi-Fi HaLow have lower infrastructure costs (Fang, 2022).
Performance:
• In case of range, the LoRaWAN and NB-IoT comes with superior outdoor range whereas the Wi-Fi HaLow provides higher data rates.
• On the other hand, the power consumption of Wi-Fi HaLow is higher than the LoRaWAN and NB-IoT which are specifically designed for low-power applications.
Justification for the selected solution –
Now, depending on the specific requirements of the open mine monitoring system, LoRaWAN is more preferable as the primary network solution which offers a balance of cost, range and power consumption and perfect or the deployment of sensor networks in challenging environments.
In order to monitor the critical parameters, a range of sensors will be implemented throughout the mine which include –
• The environmental sensors to monitor temperature, humidity and dust.
• Structural sensors which will detect vibrations or tremors.
• The noise sensors which will observe the noise levels as well as find out the potential hazards.
• Additionally, some video cameras will also be implemented to monitor and detect anomalies (Shakunthala et al., 2021).
• To enable the wireless communication between sensors and the network, some low-power yet long-range access points will be deployed throughout the mine.
• Moreover, the sensor data will be collected through gateways which will perform the initial processing and transfer the data to the edge computing platform.
While serving as the decentralized computing environment, the key functions of the edge computing platform will be –
• Data processing
• Real time data analysis
• Generating alert
• Local decision making
Additionally, a centralized environment will be provided by the cloud computing platform in order to store data an utilize the platform for advanced analytics and visualization. The key functions include –
• Data storage
• Advance Analytics
• Visualization and integration
A combination of edge and cloud computing will be utilized by the proposed IoT based open mine monitoring system in order to optimize the data processing and analytics. Along with that, several edge computing devices like gateways and micro-servers will be implemented throughout the mine in order to gather sensor data and perform initial processing tasks as well as make local decision in real time. On the other hand, the computational power and storage capacity required for advanced analytics is offered by the c loud-based platforms and therefore, the data collected from the edge devices will be transmitted to the cloud for further analysis and storage. As a result, such an interaction between the edge devices and cloud platforms will ensure seamless data flow and efficient processing (Ray Chowdhury, Pramanik and Roy, 2023).
Security is the most important concern in case of the IoT systems which are deployed in such critical infrastructure of open mines. Therefore, the security measures which should be implemented to protect the proposed IoT-based monitoring system are outlined in the section.
Encryption – The end-to-end encryption will be applied to make sure the data is confidential throughout the system. Therefore, the data will be encrypted at the sensor level and will be decrepitated only at authorized endpoints like edge devices and the cloud platforms. Along with that, some secure communication protocols such as HTTPS, TLS and DTLS will be utilized that helps to protect the data during transmission.
Access control – Also, to limit the access to sensitive data and system functionality, the role-based access control will be implemented where different job roles will be defined depending on the responsibilities. As a result, the unauthorized access and data breaches can be prevented to a certain point.
IDS/IPS – To detect as well as restrict the unauthorized access for malicious activities, some security monitoring strategies like IDS and IPS will be implemented that navigate the traffic for suspicious patterns or anomalies. Along with that, there will be regular security audits and vulnerability assessment which will help to identify as well as address the potential weaknesses.
Regular updates and patches – Along with the other security measures, the maintenance and security updates are necessary to ensure the ongoing security of the system. Therefore, the software components like operating systems, applications and firmware needs to be up-to-dated with the latest security patches and updates. Other than that, a regular patching schedule will be conducted to address the vulnerability immediately (Kumar and Tomar, 2021).
Now, to summarize the overall report, the proposed IoT-based open mine monitoring systems comes with a comprehensive solution in order to strengthen the safety, efficiency and sustainability in mining operations. As a result, the ABC Mining gets several benefits like enhanced safety, improved efficiency, environmental sustainability and data-driven decision making. Moreover, the organization can reduce the the risk of accidents by monitoring the hazardous conditions as well as can make informed decisions and enhance the overall performance of the mining operation by assessing to real-time data and analytics.
Fang, B., 2022. [Retracted] Emergency Management System for Coal Mine Safety Based on IoT Technology. Mobile Information Systems, 2022(1), p.9071676.
Shakunthala, M., Raveena, C., Saravanan, B., Kumar, S.S. and Saran, R.S., 2021. IOT Based Coal Mine Safety Monitoring and Controlling. Annals of the Romanian Society for Cell Biology, pp.12381-12387.
Ray Chowdhury, A., Pramanik, A. and Roy, G.C., 2023. IoT and LoRa based smart underground coal mine monitoring system. Microsystem Technologies, 29(7), pp.919-938.
Kumar, G. and Tomar, P., 2021. SENSEnuts IoT platform and Bayes decision theorem based mine control system. Journal| MESA, 12(4), pp.901-914.