Satellite IoT Q&A With Swarm

Q. What is Swarm Technologies?

A. Swarm provides the world's lowest-cost global, two-way satellite connectivity network for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. With 93 of its extra-small satellites currently in orbit, Swarm supports customers across a range of industries including maritime shipping, agriculture, energy, logistics & transportation, global development, environmental research, and more. Swarm's uniquely small satellites provide global coverage and are well-suited for low-bandwidth use cases such as asset tracking and sensor monitoring.

The year 2020 brought extraordinary challenges that forced many to overcome and find atypical solutions. As 2021 is being welcomed with open arms, there is a renewed sense of hope and optimism, knowing that governments and pharmaceutical companies are working tirelessly to roll out the COVID-19 vaccines with the intent of safely returning people to everyday life and a sense of normalcy soon.

Postal delivery companies face a highly competitive landscape as customer expectations have evolved. The demand for fast delivery times, low prices and exceptional service has driven rapid innovation: new solutions are needed in order to meet the needs of smart cities worldwide. Postal companies must also reach customers in rural areas, which are often much more difficult to serve due to inaccessibility and lack of infrastructure able to handle communication demands. Rural postal customers also tend to be older, which can present technological literacy issues.

Densely populated urban cities are now home to an incredible 83% of all people living in the United States. As more people flock to the opportunities and culture available in urban areas, the risk of flooding is rising dramatically. In fact, flooding resulted in $45.9 billion in economic losses in 2019 alone.

With governments increasingly recognizing the need to control energy consumption and reduce waste, the requirement to make utilities smart is not only desirable, but also the law in many countries. Although the needs of electricity, gas and water utilities are different and highly specific, each utility type requires similar foundational technologies in terms of smart devices, connectivity and data processing.

There are plenty of reasons to deploy an Internet of Things (IoT) network in a rural area. But connecting dozens or hundreds of sensors to a network can also be a nightmare. Wind turbines or oil wells benefit from sensors measuring their respective environments and performance, but their operators should count themselves lucky if such energy harvesting facilities happen to be in range of robust cellular networks so they can stay connected to the Internet. The same is true of cargo containers crossing an ocean on a ship; they could be easily tracked with individual identifying devices, but at sea, they need satellites to transmit and receive signals at all.

Bouygues Construction Matériel, a subsidiary of one of the biggest global construction groups, Bouygues Construction, is implementing an innovative asset tracking solution for smart construction. The solution, offered by Omniscient, is connecting 20,000 pieces of equipment for remote real-time management and optimization, using a LoRaWAN® network from Bouygues Telecom, the expertise of Objenious and intelligent sensors from Abeeway, a subsidiary of Actility, a global provider of Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity.

As the Internet of Things (IoT) is embraced across industry verticals with a growing number of connected devices, the connectivity technology landscape remains complex and fragmented. There is no single IoT network that has ubiquitous coverage and is capable of addressing all vertical IoT use cases.

This is the fourth blog in an ongoing series about the LoRaWAN^® protocol, and its capabilities to transform next-generation networking applications built on 5G. This blog series follows Semtech's '5G Fact vs. Fiction, and How LoRaWAN Plays a Role ' webinar, featuring Charter Communications, MultiTech and Orange, and moderated by Beecham Research. It will address some of the pressing topics offered by the audience during the webinar's Q&A. Read the introduction to the new series in part one,explore large scale LoRaWAN networks in part two - featuring MultiTech, and insights from Orange in part three.

The Internet of Things (IoT) and Semtech's LoRa® deviceshave emerged as the building blocksenabling safe and secure workplace solutions - allowing companies to adopt and maintain practical facility re-entry systems.