From drones to environmental sensors, reliable cellular networks enable comprehensive geographic data collection and analysis worldwide
by Nir Elron
From smartphones that give us driving directions to industrial systems that process information about natural resources, modern society uses a lot of information about the Earth’s surface, topography and infrastructure. It is often called spatial data, meaning any type of data that directly or indirectly references a specific geographical area or location.
That data is managed with geographic information systems (GIS), which are computer-based tools designed to store, visualize, analyze, and interpret geographic information. Details about roads, topography, weather conditions, landmarks, businesses, etc are organized into layers, which can be combined and displayed on maps.
The GIS are ubiquitous, and their capabilities go far beyond just ensuring that products and people get where they need to go. These systems also contribute to numerous scientific applications: using GIS, epidemiologists track disease outbreaks, ecologists study wildlife migration, and climate scientists analyze changes in glaciers, sea levels, and regional weather patterns. They can also help tackle very complex real-world problems, for example, to understand geographical differences in access to healthcare during pandemics, prioritize infrastructure improvement projects or assess the impacts of agriculture on water resources.
But before spatial data is cleaned, analyzed, aligned and combined to create comprehensive datasets for a map, it needs to be gathered. Modern maps are based on diverse location data from multiple sources, including aerial imagery, lidar scans and ground surveys.
When it comes to gathering data for mapping, cellular connectivity is essential. High-resolution cameras used in aerial surveys and mapping to capture images of the Earth’s surface, lidars that emit laser pulses to measure distances and create detailed 3D models of the terrain, sensors that gather data on various environmental parameters – all these devices need connectivity literally on every spot on the planet. On top of that, most of these devices must be mounted on some vehicles, and they, in turn, need cellular connectivity for certain operations.
Let’s take a look at the cellular-enabled use cases that are widely applied in mapping and GIS.
Drones
Drones equipped with high-resolution cameras, lidar sensors, and GPS are used for aerial surveys, creating detailed topographic maps, and capturing large-scale imagery. The purpose of this is not necessarily limited by topography and infrastructure. It is also widely used in agriculture to track crops growth and prevent the spread of invasive plants. Because drones fly closer to Earth’s surface, cloud cover and poor light conditions matter less than when using satellite imaging, and accuracy is higher.
Drones need stable connection both for their command-and-control functions to operate beyond the visual line of sight and transmitting data from cameras and other devices. Cellular connectivity is good for drones for coverage reasons and because it allows not only low-latency control over the drone but also provides means for secure, fast and high-volume data transfer.
Mapping Vehicles
Along with drones, cameras and various devices that help capture detailed geographic data can be mounted on a car. It is especially important for street-level mapping and features such as street view.
Cellular connectivity is equally essential in this case – vehicles equipped with special cameras need reliable connection both downtown and in rural outskirts. Upon detecting an event of interest, the in-vehicle mounted data capture system can immediately capture the event and transmit its recording over 4G or 5G connection to cloud based processing and analysis.
Uncrewed Surface Vessels (USV)
Capturing high-precision bathymetric and sea-bed data in coastal waterways is of utmost importance to ensure safe shipping. It is also required for engineering activities, mapping various hazards, archaeological potential and environmental monitoring. Acquiring this data can be challenging and costly, and oftentimes is done with USVs equipped with cameras and multiple sensors such as multibeam bathymetry, side scan sonars, sub-bottom profilers, magnetometers etc.
These sea drones, too, use LTE connectivity and can be especially useful for control, data offloading as well as creating maps of hard-to-reach or hazardous locations, increasing safety.
Environmental Sensors
There are many types of sensors that provide real-time data on temperature, wind speed, precipitation, humidity and other environmental parameters to enhance mapping with additional context. Some of them can be mounted on drones; however, some are stationary and oftentimes are placed in remote areas with no access to fixed communications.
Due to their omnipresence, cellular networks are the best, and in many cases the only connectivity option for these devices.
Connectivity Requirements
For each use case in mapping, connectivity requirements may differ depending on location, type of equipment used and data to be transmitted, but there are common demands that are important for most usage scenarios.
Coverage
Coverage is vital for almost any use case in mapping. First of all, the data that needs to be transmitted over cellular networks may be important, but there are also other reasons. For example, a drone’s command and control functions and other tasks are critically dependent on reliable coverage, especially when operating beyond visual line of sight. For use cases in locations where network coverage may be spotty, there are options of bonding cellular signal or setting up a private cellular network.
Bandwidth
Sufficient bandwidth is crucial to almost all mapping usage scenarios due to the high consumption of data, such as high-resolution imagery, and stable transmission of data in real time.
Low Latency
Drones demand control and navigation that can’t properly work with delays. When gathering data from environmental sensors, delays and errors in data transmission even from one of many sensors may affect the whole picture and lead to wrong decisions.
Cellular connection is a good option in that regard, but it’s important to remember that actual latency would depend not only on the type of connectivity, but also on the connectivity provider’s core network architecture.
Regulatory Compliance
Since mapping implies not only taking pictures, but also, for example, flying drones, there may be more than one type of regulations to comply with. In any country there are legislative acts that can impact the usage of cellular-connected devices. Starting with strictly technical aspects, there are also regulations on data transfer, privacy and sovereignty, industry specific or local regulations. To add to the challenge, legislation is constantly changing. That means that enterprises need to make sure their connectivity solution is adaptive enough to comply with regulations in case they change in the future.
Webbing’s Solution
Webbing offers a connectivity solution that ensures global access to reliable and high-quality internet, with low latency and the best of class coverage. It provides secure and continuous internet connection for devices on the move, wherever they need it.
Webbing’s partner network of over 600 mobile operators worldwide guarantees global coverage. It allows to roam on several carriers’ network in every region, solving the problem of weak spots that any mobile network may have and ensuring full coverage and continuous connectivity even at remote locations.
Webbing is a global connectivity provider with a distributed full core network with local breakouts, multiple network solution, and data server redundancy that provides connectivity stability and low latency.
As such, Webbing’s network is well suited to support mission-critical, high-data consumption type of use cases. For autonomous and shore-operated setups, our solution provides dual APN that enables our partners to split routing for data-only transfer and control and monitoring functions.
It also allows for compliance with all types of connectivity regulations – from IP traffic that remains in the country to designated profiles for emergency calls, so it’s easy to comply with local and regional connectivity regulation requirements. Webbing can seamlessly localize deployments utilizing Remote SIM Provisioning even in heavily regulated markets.
Our eSIM solution ensures failover connectivity with the capability of using multiple mobile carrier profiles, easily changing carriers at any time with zero integration, and an option to fall back from a failing profile to a different profile without any need to communicate with a remote server or deal with multiple SIM cards.
A flexible approach to data packages allows us to tailor our connectivity offering for every customer based on the type of connected devices and their data consumption needs as well as the locations where the devices are used, aiming at overall optimization of the total cost of operations for the client.
Our solutions help enterprises overcome their connectivity challenges and optimize costs for global deployments, providing the benefits of roaming with multiple carrier options in every country, and seamless transition between carriers, while maintaining low rates and low latency on a global scale with a single SIM.
Reach out to learn more about our connectivity solutions.
