Norwegian maritime group Wilhelmsen is deploying a LoRaWAN network at 2.4 GHz to bring connectivity to its operations at land and sea. It will offer connectivity to customers as well.
The firm has struck a deal with Dutch LoRaWAN collective The Things Industries (TTI), the industrial arm of The Things Network (TTN) developer community, to deploy LoRa-based IoT devices from California firm Semtech in the 2.4 GHz band across its operations globally.
Sensor data on ships is typically carried on wired systems, or else managed via periodic manual readings. Wilhelmsen’s ship management division is seeking to use the 2,4 GHz band to enable digital condition monitoring, asset tracking and logistical applications, it said.
In particular, it will put in place predictive maintenance, by gathering data about the condition of machinery, fuel efficiency, environmental metrics, and cargo. The objective is to decrease idle times due to repair or incidents.
TTI will develop an IoT platform. It said Wilhelmsen will be able to tap into an ecosystem of vendors and service providers, and a marketplace of certified sensors, hardware designers, systems integrators, and application developers.
Wilhelmsen said its new LoRa-based infrastructure and devices will work with its onboard app store project, called ShipOS, headed by Norwegian maritime technology provider RaaLabs.
Wilhelmsen serves 20,000 vessels out of 2,200 ports in 70 countries. It handles more than 220,000 product deliveries per year.
Jon Helge Ulstein, senior project manager at Wilhelmsen, said: “We have evaluated wireless solutions for decades to deliver efficiencies at land and sea. The technology solution of choice needed key capabilities to revolutionize our strategy – long range, low power and a strong, open ecosystem. This new system is expected to benefit our customers immediately and is a step towards autonomous vessels and industry 4.0.”
Wienke Giezeman, chief executive of The Things Industries, said: “We are excited to be a partner in this important project and are looking forward to working with the broader LoRaWAN ecosystem to make this a success for Wilhelmsen and the maritime industry.”
Marc Pegulu, vice president of Semtech’s sensing products group, commented: “Wilhelmsen’s industry expertise and innovation, combined with Semtech’s LoRa devices, offers a flexible ecosystem to deliver robust and cost-effective IoT solutions to transform the maritime industry.”
