By Joerg Ahrweiler, Mohamed Daoud, Muhammad Khan & Hossam Hmimy, Charter Communications
Smart cities and communities is a concept that is gaining more attention because of its potential to enhance citizens’ lives and make cities and communities more efficient. Rural America can also benefit from leveraging new technologies like IoT (Internet of Things) and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) to achieve better operational efficiencies.
In this paper we present findings in a Proof of Concept (PoC) project that demonstrates how technology can help an equestrian farm transform into a smart farm. We discuss the details of connecting the farm with high-speed broadband using FWA in the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) frequency band then meshing the barn with high-speed Wi-Fi using Point-to-Multipoint unlicensed band.
Within the project, we also deployed LoRaWAN technology to provide early-warning detection of potential illness in the horses on the farm through the use of a water intake monitoring solution in addition to LoRaWAN environmental sensors installed to monitor the horses’ surroundings. Another use case is deploying a mix of LoRaWAN and video analytics to detect unauthorized access to facilities.