Industrial autonomous LTE WAN
Situation
The customer is located in an area with limited network coverage. The smartphone antennas do not provide sufficient signal to work stably. No provider comes with a wired connection near the area. Since the area is completely off-grid, the system must consume as little power as possible. The connection must be active without interruption, all year round, for continuous monitoring of the systems.
Solutions considered
- Implementation of a 4G antenna placed at the best possible coverage location.
- Implementation of a satellite connection.
Implemented solution
In view of the different criteria, the choice was made for a redundant 4G connection. Indeed, this one allows better speeds, a low latency, and a reasonable cost. In comparison, the satellite connection has the disadvantage of high or very high latency.
Operator search
In our case, we have chosen two operators offering so-called “unlimited” connections. These connections usually limit the speed beyond a certain amount of data used. There is never any overcharging when using large volumes.
Choice of hardware
The condition being a low consumption, we opted for a model of the range “Teltonika”. Moreover, these models generally support SIM redundancy by default. To compensate the poor network coverage, it was necessary to use a directional antenna. We worked with “quwireless”.
Additional configuration
Since LTE providers generally do not allow opening ports for direct remote access, it was necessary to configure a constant VPN tunnel with an intermediate server with a fixed IP.
In order to optimize bandwidth usage, both SIMs were configured in load balancing mode.
Conclusion
After installation and analysis, the stabilized signal allowed a stable connection from 15 to 30 Mbps per SIM (load balanced) for a maximum consumption of 7w.
