PAIoT Network: A Unique Regional IoT Network for Very Different

Applications

Stefania Nanni

1,*

and Gianluca Mazzini

2,†

LepidaScpa, Viale della Liberazione 15, 40128 Bologna, Italy

Engeneering Department, University of Ferrara, Italy

Keywords: IoT Network, LoRaWan, Sensors, IoT Applications.

Abstract: LepidaSpa, the ICT in-house company of the Public Administrations of the Emilia Romagna region, has

realized a regional IoT public network

‡

, based on the LoRaWan

technology, free of charge for all public

administrations, as well as to private citizens, potentially enabling the collection of relevant data from

thousands of new sensors and making them accessible to both the owners of the sensors and, limitedly to

institutional or public interest scopes, to every PA entity. The innovative aspects of the proposed solution

mainly concern the extreme simplicity of the sensors installation, the low entry costs for stakeholders, both

public and private, who want to deploy their own sensors, a centralized service that collects and makes data

available in the cloud, the replicability of IoT projects on a regional scale.

1 INTRODUCTION

The Emilia-Romagna Region, through the in-house

company LepidaScpa, has created a regional IoT

network, based on in LoRaWan technology. The

availability of the PAIoT (Internet of Things for the

Public Administration) network at the regional level

is an enabler for the installation of different types of

sensors available to all the interested parties, both

public and private, as it removes the costs of building

the network, collecting and storing the data from the

implementation costs of monitoring systems, leaving

only those relating to the purchase, installation and

maintenance of sensors.

In this innovative model of Public-Private

partnership, individual users have the possibility to

easily install new sensors and create new services,

while the Region and the PAs have thousands of

continuously updated data sets available, coming

from the installed sensors, which allow them to learn

more about what happens in cities and territories.

The first paragraph of this paper illustrates the

main characteristics of the PAIoT network created by

LepidaScpa, while the next paragraph describes three

https://www.lepida.net/

†

http://www.unife.it/it

‡

https://loragis.lepida.it/loragis/

https://lora-alliance.org/about-lorawan

examples of IoT projects that use it, with particular

focus to their ease of installation, their cost-

effectiveness, their use in very different domains and

their potential replicability at regional level.

2 THE STATE OF THE ART

Low Power Wide Area Network with wide

geographic coverage and low power consumption, In

are emerged the latest five years.

They operate in the band around the 868 MHz in

Europe and 915 MHz in the USA.

These technologies can be considered a real

innovation in the IoT world as they extend by a factor

of ten the coverage range of the de facto standards

such as ZigBee

A technology that fits into this new trend is the

Lo-Ra™ of Semtech technology. Its advantages

compared to existing technologies for sensor

networks are:

• a wider range by 10 times, compared to the

short-range technologies, thanks to a 198dB link

budget (obtained via a spread spectrum modulation)

Nanni, S. and Mazzini, G.

PAIoT Network: A Unique Regional IoT Network for Very Different Applications.

DOI: 10.5220/0010321401070112

In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Sensor Networks (SENSORNETS 2021), pages 107-112

ISBN: 978-989-758-489-3

107

that allows for connections of up to 15 km in the sub-

urban area, 2-5 km in densely populated urban areas

and 2 km inside buildings;

• simplified network architecture (nodes sensors

communicate directly with the concentrators)

• low consumption of nodes (up to 10 years when

battery powered);

• very high network density: a single-concentrator

gateway can connect thousands of nodes (up to

50,000)

• very low cost of the transmitting nodes.

All the above features make the Lo-Ra™ system

an optimal solution, in the current scenario, for the

implementation of Internet of Things paradigm,

because a single concentrator can cover a wide area

with a star architecture, which eliminates the

problems associated with multi-hop (routing

problems, latency, etc.) and because is characterized

by high energy efficiency which can enable the

duration of the batteries of nodes even for several

years, without the constraint of the presence of the

power supply.

The Lo-Ra™ of Semtech technology can be used

in private applications (Nanni S., Mazzini G., 2017)

(that is, without necessarily requiring the presence of

an operator), and actually there many LoRaWAN

networks around the world, managed by many public

operators or private subjects. The availability of a

regional IoT network, like PaIoT, network can offer

to citizens the opportunity to install thousands of

sensors for their own purposes and to Public

Administrations to learn more about what happens in

cities and territories to better plan and manage them.

3 PAIoT NETWORK

LepidaScpa is the in-house company of Emilia-

Romagna in charge of providing broadband network

to all PAs in the region [Fig.1].

Figure 1: Lepida broadband network.

The simultaneous availability of Lo-Ra™

technology and Lepida broadband network makes a

perfect synergy for the deployment of an IoT network

at regional level, PAIoTnetwork, available to public

administrations, companies and citizens.

Fig.2 shows the current status of implementation

of the PAIoT network, which will cover all the

provinces of the Emilia-Romagna region when fully

operational.

Figure 2: PAIoT network.

The architecture of PAIoT network, based on

Lepida broadband network, is described in Fig.3 and

relies on the following components:

Figure 3: PAIoT network architecture.

1. Sensors (of any kind) which send data to Lo-

Ra™ gateways by means of LoRaWan protocol;

2. LoraWan Gateways which receive data from

LoRaWan sensors are installed in any Access Point

of Lepida network (PAL), in order to use Lepida

broadband network to transmit data to Lo-Ra™

Server;

3. Lo-Ra™ Server: virtual machine installed in one

of the three regional data centers managed by

LepidaScpa, that receives data from LoraWan

Gateways through Lepida broadband network.

The data received from the LoRa server are stored

in a centralized database and are made available

through different interfaces: MQTT protocol, API

and web interfaces.

SENSORNETS 2021 - 10th International Conference on Sensor Networks

108

The initiative implemented by LepidaScpa and

funded by the Emilia-Romagna Region has the

following main objectives:

1. create a public IOT Network where citizens,

private companies and PAs can integrate their own

sensors, making them available to owners and PA

entities limitedly to institutional and public interest

goals.

2. allow citizens and private companies to collect

data from their own sensors wherever they want to

install it.

3. allow PA access to data collected by all the

sensors installed in the territory for monitoring

purposes.

4. enable IOT development through a unique Lo-

Ra™ network managed by PA with a rational usage

of the frequencies and resources optimization.

5. map all the existing sensors in the territory

through a sensor register providing all the technical

parameters and the owner identification.

On top of the data collection, transport, storage

and data retrieval services, LepidaScpa also offers the

decoding service of the payload, for immediate use of

the data by the owners of the sensors and, in

anonymized form, by the PA.

Their use in terms of business intelligence or in a

holistic perspective, by the Public Administrations is

constantly evolving and monitored because it not only

depends on the type of sensors installed and on their

location on the territory, but also on the future needs

or opportunities.

Any development of applications or specific

interfaces for analysis and synthesis, however, is

entrusted to individual owners of the sensors,

according to the purposes for which they have

installed them.

4 CASE STUDIES

4.1 Care Residence of Novi

ASP Terre d'Argine di Carpi is a non-economic

public body, which aims to deliver social and health

care services to people in not self-sufficient

conditions (seniors or disabled) in the Municipalities

of the District (Campogalliano, Carpi, Novi of

Modena and Soliera).

The hospitality centres managed by the ASP are:

• Casa Residenza “Ten. L. Marchi” – Carpi

• Care-Residence “R. Rossi” – Novi di Modena

• Centro Diurno “Il Carpine” – Carpi

• Centro Diurno “Borgofortino” – Carpi

• Centro Diurno “De Amicis” – Carpi

• Centro Diurno “R. Rossi” – Novi di Modena

• Centro Ospitalità per Adulti Ex-Carretti – Carpi

With the aim to providing innovative services,

using digital technologies to support vulnerable

people, a case study was launched at the Care

Residence in Novi di Modena to detect some

environmental parameters of the apartments where

guests live independently, in order to constantly

monitor their well-being conditions and report any

abnormal or critical ones.

In particular, in about ten apartments, one or two

motion sensors have been installed, capable of

detecting the passage and time of stay of a person in

a certain area, and an environmental sensor for

monitoring temperature, humidity and lighting level.

Continuous monitoring of the aforementioned

simple parameters makes it possible to verify that

guests lead a regular life, moving during the day and

resting at night, in a comfortable, properly lit and air-

conditioned environment at different times of the day.

Any detections of lack of movement during the

day or vice versa, of frequent movements or

prolonged levels of light during the night, can be

indicators of abnormal conditions and as such

reported to the operators responsible, so that they can

evaluate the importance and possible intervention.

Figure 4 shows the floorplan of the apartments of

the Care Residence in Novi di Modena and the typical

positioning of the motion sensors (blue) in the kitchen

and in the bedroom in the case of two motion sensors,

or in the kitchen in the case of a single sensor. The

environmental sensor (green) in the kitchen in both

cases.

Figure 4: Apartments Floorplan in the Care-Residence “R.

Rossi” – Novi di Modena.

PAIoT Network: A Unique Regional IoT Network for Very Different Applications

109

Figure 5 shows an example of the dashboard of

the daily data received and analysed: in this specific

case only one movement has been detected during the

night, a practically constant and pleasant temperature

throughout the day (24 °C) has been measured, but a

night brightness higher than the expected level (20

lumens) has been observed for a long period of time

and it has been therefore reported.

Figure 5: Dashboard.

The encouraging results obtained from this first

experimentation are the basis for its possible

extension in both quantitative terms, to other

structures managed by the ASP, and in qualitative

terms, through the addition of sensors such as, for

example, a water sensor to determine the use of the

shower or a magnetic sensor to determine the opening

of the external door and, therefore, the good practice

of properly leaving the house.

The ease of installation of the sensors, due to the

battery power supply and the coverage of the PAIoT

network of the other potentially involved structures,

constitute the boundary conditions for this extension

to be easily achieved at regional level, exploiting the

know-how acquired on the use, interpretation and

correlation of the parameters monitored and the

correspondingly realized dashboards.

4.2 Smart City: Municipality of Carpi

(Modena)

The Smart City in Carpi is becoming reality: the

municipal council signed on 29 July 2020 a

memorandum of understanding with the Emilia

Romagna Region and Lepida Scpa started to install

dozens of sensors by the year 2020 in the municipal

area, which will collect data on environmental

dynamics to make them “analysed, returned and

monitored in real time."

The pilot project - which in terms of LoRa

technology has no equal in size in the Region and

perhaps in the rest of Italy, and is inspired by the most

advanced European cities – includes the installation

of dozens of sensors capable of recording in a

capillary way extremely valuable measures such as

the concentrations of fine dust and carbon dioxide, the

temperature and humidity of the air, the water levels

in the canals and the flows of vehicular traffic.

The data generated by the various sensors

installed on the territory define a punctual reality,

made up of constantly updated information, which

allows us to better understand what happens in the

cities and territories.

It should be emphasized that the data will not be

intended only for insiders, but will be available for

consultation by citizens, through dashboard that will

be developed by Lepida Scpa.

Table 1 summarizes the number of sensors

expected within the Smart City project of Carpi.

Table 1.

TYPE

DESCRIPTION

PROJECT

A TEMPARTAURE HUMIDITY-NO-NO2-

PM2.5-PM5-PM10

B TEMPARATURE-UMIDITY-CO2-NO-

NO2-PM2.5-PM5-PM10

C WEATHER STATION 4

D TEMPERATURE - AIR & SOIL 4

E HIDROMETER 3

F RAIN GAUGE 3

G NUMBER AND SPEED OF VEHICLES 83

TOTAL 131

Figure 6 shows the distribution of the different

types of sensors expected within the urban area of the

Municipality of Carpi.

Figure 6: Distribution of Sensors in Carpi.

SENSORNETS 2021 - 10th International Conference on Sensor Networks

110

Figures 7 and 8 respectively show the graphs of a

rain gauge and an air control unit installed in the

Municipality of Carpi, through which it is possible to

highlight the amount of precipitation and the

concentration of fine dust with greater detail on the

territory than already taken place at the regional level.

Figure 7: Graph of Rain Gauge Sensors.

Figure 8: Graph of Air Control Sensors.

The star architecture that characterizes the PAIoT

network, in which the sensors communicate directly

with the LoRa gateways, is a key feature for the

installation of a large number of sensors, as required

by a Smart City project.

For that reason, Carpi project can be considered a

pilot project that not only provides the Public

Administration with a very useful knowledge tool to

support Governance and the management of

environmental risks, but also to define guidelines, at

a technological level , in the identification of the most

performing sensors, functional and applicative level,

in the design of the summary dashboards, to support

its replicability in the other 328 Municipalities of the

Emilia-Romagna region, already covered by the

PAIoT network, and interested in the project.

http://swamp-project.org/

https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/777112

4.3 Smart Agriculture: University of

Bologna

The third case study concerns the deployment of a

platform for smart water management in agriculture

(Kamienski C., Soininen J., Taumberger M.,

Fernandes S., Toscano A., Salmon Cinotti T., Filev

Maia R., and Neto A. T., 2018) (Zyrianoff I.,

Heideker A., Silva D., Kleinschmidt J., Soininen J.-

P., Salmon Cinotti T., and Kamienski C., 2020)

(Kamienski C., Kleinschmidt J., Soininen J.,

Kolehmainen K., Roffia L., Visoli M., Filev Maia R.,

and Fernandes S., 2018). The platform was developed

within SWAMP, a research project

funded by the EU

and by Brazil, within the H2020 framework (EUB-

02-2017 IoT Pilots Call, Grant agreement N.

777112)

and focused on the demonstration of

Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in real-world

scenarios.

Four pilots in the agricultural domain were

proposed by SWAMP: one in Spain, one in Italy and

two in Brazil. The case study considered in this paper

is focused on the Italian pilot, located close to Reggio

Emilia within the area managed by the Consorzio di

Bonifica dell’Emilia Centrale (CBEC)

CBEC manages the delivery of water to farmers

through a network of open canals and the goal of the

pilot is twofold: using sensors and models to detect

crop water needs, and optimizing water delivery

based on water requests made by the farmers (i.e., at

present time more than 15K requests were filed

during the ongoing irrigation season).

One of the main critical aspects in such a scenario

is related to data collection and transmission. The lack

of power sources and the extension of the area

covered impose two main requirements: to use battery

powered sensors and to have access to a low-power

wide area network.

Both requirements were satisfied by adopting the

LoRaWAN technology, supported by the PAIoT

network implemented and maintained by LepidaScpa

and by designing a battery powered multi-sensor node

(see Figure 9), using in this use case to tune the soil

to optimize the irrigation plan.

https://www.emiliacentrale.it/

PAIoT Network: A Unique Regional IoT Network for Very Different Applications

111

Figure 9: Battery Powered multi-sensors node.

Figure 10 shows the sensors of the project: in

green the already installed ones, in yellow the ones in

activation phase, and in gray the Lora gateway of the

PAIoT network that cover the interested area.

Figure 10: Sensors installed in Smart-Agriculture.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The applications presented in this paper are a few

examples of how many different domains can take

benefit of the recent advances in technology. In

particular, the advent of LoRaWAN broadens the

range of possible IoT applications.

The effort made by LepidaScpa in providing an

open LoRaWAN network to collect and store data

from the field is a fundamental asset to reduce entry

costs for stakeholders, both public and private, who

want to deploy their own sensor network within the

Emilia Romagna region.

The aim of the PAIoT network is to enable the

installation of thousands of sensors through the

availability of a network infrastructure for the

collection, storage and consultation of data available

to all PAs, companies and citizens of the territory,

delegating to all users interested only in the purchase,

installation and maintenance of the sensors according

to the needs and application areas of interest.

Finally, the PAIoT network coverage is extended

at regional level, and it constitutes the prerequisite

and opportunity for the replicability of pilot projects

on a regional scale.

REFERENCES

Kamienski C., Soininen J., Taumberger M., Fernandes S.,

Toscano A., Salmon Cinotti T., Filev Maia R., and Neto

A. T., 2018 “Swamp: an iot-based smart water

management platform for precision irrigation in

agriculture,” in 2018 Global Internet of Things Summit

(GIoTS), pp. 1–6.

Zyrianoff I., Heideker A., Silva D., Kleinschmidt J.,

Soininen J.-P., Salmon Cinotti T., and Kamienski C.,

2020 “Architecting and Deploying IoT Smart

Applications: A Performance–Oriented Approach,”

Sen sors, vol. 20, no. 84.

Kamienski C., Kleinschmidt J., Soininen J., Kolehmainen

K., Roffia L., Visoli M., Filev Maia R., and Fernandes

S., 2018 “Swamp: Smart water management platform

overview and security challenges,” in 2018 48th

Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on

Dependable Systems and Networks Workshops (DSN-

W), pp. 49–50.

Nanni S., Mazzini G., 2017 “Indoor monitoring in Public

Buildings: workplace wellbeing and energy

consumptions. An example of IoT for smart cities

application”, Advances in Science, Technology and

Engineering Systems Journal, ASTESJ - Website

Editor, http://astesj.com/v02/i03/, June 2017.

SENSORNETS 2021 - 10th International Conference on Sensor Networks

112