The Silvanet Border Gateway provides connectivity via the Internet between the Silvanet Mesh Network and the Silvanet Cloud Platform.
Dryad's Silvanet Border Gateway provide the connectivity between the Silvanet Mesh Network and the Silvanet Cloud Platform. It is assumed to be always on (24 hour operation) to listen for messages sent by Wildfire Sensors in the Site. It can operate using its solar panel or in combination with a mains power supply and its solar panel. Internet connectivity can be wireless (mobile), wired (Ethernet) or satellite.
The Border Gateway is ideally placed at the edge of a forest. As the Border Gateways are LoRaWAN compliant, they can also communicate directly with Wildfire Sensors if any are within range of the Border Gateway.
Deployment scenarios The Border Gateway can be set up in various deployment scenarios depending on the availability of power supplies, internet connectivity and deployment locations. See Border Gateway deployment scenarios.
Mount directly to trees or poles
Includes a solar panel and PoE Injector
Uses LoRaWan to connect with the Silvanet Mesh Network.
Internet connectivity:
4G/LTE-M (with 2G/GPRS fallback) or NB-IoT.
Ethernet using the PoE Injector.
Satellite for remote deployments and for backup.
Energy source:
mains power supply using the supplied PoE Injector.
Solar panel to provide daily energy requirements.
Supports FUOTA (Firmware Update Over-the-Air) for remote firmware updates.
Supports deployment of up to 20 Mesh Gateways.
Directly receives messages from sensors if they are within range.
Each shipment of a Border Gateway includes the following components:
Silvanet Border Gateway
Solar panel
Treenails (for permanent deployment)
U-Bolt Clamps, M10 nuts and washers
5 meter roll of garden wire (for temporary deployment)
LoRa antenna (North America: 915 MHz, EU: 868 MHz, Asia: 433 MHz)
LTE-M antenna
Satellite antenna
PoE Injector and one power cable
RJ45 CAT6 Ethernet network cable for use with the PoE
The dimensions of the Silvanet Border Gateway is (LxWxH) 27.5 cm (63 cm with antennas) x 46 cm (with the satellite antenna) x 4.5 cm and weighs 1.3 kg.
The Silvanet Border Gateway includes a PoE Injector to connect to a mains power source. If a router is available, it can be connected via Ethernet to the PoE.
The PoE provides a voltage range of between 36 V and 57 V and is IEEE 802.3af compliant.
For more details, see Border Gateway deployment scenarios.
For off-grid locations or when a mains power supply is unavailable, the solar panel provides the Border Gateway's daily energy requirements and ensures the supercapacitors are charged.
During the night when the solar panel loses generating capacity, the supercapacitors allow the device to continue receiving power. This ensures a continuous power supply to the Border Gateway.
The cable between the Border Gateway and the solar panel is 2 m long and is pre-connected.
When a relatively short power outage occurs, the Border Gateway's supercapacitors allow the device to continue receiving power.
Should a power outage occur for an extended period, such as 10 hours of even several days, the solar panel guarantees a power supply to the Border Gateway by charging its supercapacitors until the power supply is restored.
To reduce overall power requirements, the Border Gateway's modem wakes up ever hour and stays on for five minutes to send a message (a "heartbeat") to the Silvanet Cloud to indicate it is alive.
The Border Gateway's internal supercapacitors provide a power supply of 5415Ws. They provide a large amount of power for a short duration (for example, when it sends a "heartbeat") and are continuously recharged from an external power supply (PoE or solar panel).
Use of supercapacitors Power supply is stored in supercapacitors rather than rechargeable batteries as rechargeable batteries can ignite. This would defeat the purpose of a wildfire detection system.
The Border Gateway provides a range of options to connect to the Internet.
It supports LTE-M (Cat-M1)/NB-IoT which requires access to a 4G network with 2G fallback (GPRS). An LTE-M antenna is provided to connect to a 4G network.
If a router is available, the Border Gateway can be connected to the router using the PoE Injector and Ethernet.
Satellite (backup) connectivity is provided should Ethernet and LTE-M become unavailable or if the Border Gateway is deployed in a remote location without access to mobile towers. An antenna is provided for Satellite uplink.
Satellite uplinks provide Fire alerts only A satellite uplink should only be used for remote deployments where there is no mobile network coverage AND no access to mains power. However, the Border Gateway sends only fire alerts when using satellite connectivity.
The Border Gateway supports FUOTA (Firmware Update Over The Air) with high flexibility. Large file transfers are successfully made securely and reliably even with eventual interruptions of the power supply and, consequently, sensor operation.
Firmware is updated using a chunked image transfer (no compression). All Silvanet sensors in a Site are updated at the same time using Multicast. To do this, the LoRaWAN Network Protocol is temporarily switched to Class B which allows two-way communication.
To cope with low power and the various regional regulatory requirements, both the downlink fragment size as well as the periodicity are highly configurable allowing for stretching a FUOTA process even to a week.
For more details, see Firmware Updates (FUOTA).
