Environmental monitoring of industrial and urban sites. Use of environmental sensor networks. State of the technico-economic art

Summary

The advent of wireless telecommunications networks accompanying mobile telephony, and more recently the launch of long-range networks used for connected objects and the IOT (Internet of Things), suggests the opportunity to set up sensor networks to refine the environmental monitoring of sites.

The study involves describing existing telecommunications networks that could be used to monitor the environment and comparing the technologies available. Given the complexity of the possible choices, network architectures were identified that could correspond to typical configurations; a combination of several networks could be used to meet all requirements: long-range and low-power networks, cellular networks evolving towards 5G, satellite networks specialising in IOT, and so on.

But processing data from sensors remains a challenge. The main obstacle to the development of these wireless networks is the limited availability of reliable, low-cost sensors. More research in this area would be welcome and would undoubtedly open up new opportunities for environmental monitoring of sites, whether urban or industrial.