Spaceway is conducting UNIoT project, supported by ESA BIC Portugal. UNIoT brings affordable Internet of Things (IoT) communications anytime and anywhere, especially to organizations that operate in remote locations with low to no internet connectivity. IoT allows to manage and monitor entire ecosystems of interconnected devices. The problem arises when those assets are in rural areas, for example, the agriculture and energy sectors. The possibility of collecting precise data and making it available remotely enables intelligent, reactive, and proactive practices.
The UNIoT concept is simple: we use nanosatellites as our repeaters in space to transmit data from remote areas to the client’s cloud. The communication is based on LoRa technology, which is affordable, secure, and very power efficient. At Spaceway, our plan is to take advantage of this IoT revolution happening in space by focusing on the ground first. That’s why we are developing the UNIoT Orchestrator, a modular and secure device able to wirelessly receive data from different sets of sensors, preprocess, encrypt, and prioritize it locally, so it can be transmitted to space.
The main objective is the development of a system that allows the remote monitoring of vineyards and functional biodiversity and demonstrates its technological feasibility and usefulness for the producer.
Reliable and secure data reception achieved by Over the Air Authentication between commercial IoT sensor networks and UNIoT Orchestrator.
Preprocess mechanisms to optimize data transmission by discarding static parameters and others which represent an overhead to the end-user, minimizing satellite communication costs.
Global coverage achieved by a modular system which can be integrated with multiple satellite communication modules, guaranteeing compatibility with the local spectrum legislation.\
Massive IoT environments, where hundreds of devices are communicating simultaneously, UNIoT Orchestrator is able to buffer communications avoiding data loss and message collision.