IDESIO’s solution is based on a multi-radio, configurable gateway that collecting data via radio from distances of up to 10 Km, that can be mounted on any type of drone. IDESIO does not produce drones, but uses those provided by any carrier available on the market. The gateway is developed by IDESIO as a result of a decade of experience of its team members both within European research and industrial projects. The gateway is independent of avionics and compatible with any type of drone. IDESIO uses radio technologies such as Zigbee, WiFI, 3G, LoRa and UWB. We identify and make a suitable choice of technology for each application and user need.
The gateway deployed on board of a drone queries ground segment nodes using several radio interfaces that can be employed on them (as Zigbee, WiFi or LoRa); furthermore, it transmits collected data in real-time to the Data Segment through GPRS, 3G or WiFi. That allows for the analysis of the data on a server side, along with data visualisation on maps within just a few seconds. Whenever the drone flight is performed in areas without the cellular network coverage, the data are memorised on board of the drone and downloaded as soon as the drone lands.
The choice of radio interfaces depends on the specific application, the reference distances between the drone and ground segment nodes as well as the amount and the type of data that need to be collected.
IDESIO’s system is highly flexible and customisable.
The gateway is characterised by minimum weight, dimensions, consumption and independence on the rest of the payload and avionics; the device has its own battery. Radio systems are designed in such a way to guarantee the coexistence with piloting system.
WiFi
WiFi technology (based on IEEE 802.11g) standard allows data transmission at 54 Mbit / s over distances up to about 100 m on the ISM (license-free) band at 2.4 GHz. It is a very successful radio standard used in many application contexts resulting in lower realization cost and maximum reliability. Optimal for civil structure monitoring and when the large amounts of data need to be transmitted.
LoRa
Lora technology allows the transmission of data at a few tens of kbit / s up to distances of about 10 km using ISM (license-free) band at 868 MHz. It ‘a recently introduced proprietary radio system used in the field of Smart City applications, with low realization cost and high reliability. Optimal for all applications in which the area to be monitored is very vast.
Zigbee
The ZigBee (based on IEEE 802.15.4) standard technology allows data transmission at 250 kbit / s up to a distance of about 100 m using the ISM (license-free) band at 2.4 GHz. It ‘a very successful radio standard used in many application contexts with very low realization cost and high reliability. Optimal for applications such as precision agriculture.
GPRS
Il backbone GPRS permette la trasmissione mediante rete di operatore mobile di poche decine di kbit/s.
In alternativa il modem 3G consente la trasmissione a bit rate molto maggiori.
UltraWideBand
La tecnologia UltraWideBand opera su bande di alcuni GHz e consente la trasmissione di dati fino a centinaia di metri ad una bit rate di qualche centinaio di Kbit/s.
Essa consente inoltre la misura di distanza tra dispositivi con precisione centimetrica.