System design problem 3

Pooriya Samadifar

1. Introduction
The Sami people who live in the north of Sweden, want to track their reindeer. Positioning data should be collected
from reindeer with an acceptable error of 10km and it should be uploaded to a cloud server, in this way when the
reindeer herds have access to an internet connection, they can monitor their reindeer via an application that is
accessible using their laptop or phones. The recommended solution should provide basic internet access such as social
media updates, and sending and receiving emails at suitable places. Even though Sweden has good mobile internet
coverage, which is provided by cellular operators, there are some areas of Swedish Lapland with very bad connectivity
conditions.

2. Technical challenges
How long do reindeer live? The lifetime of a reindeer is about 25 to 30 years, so we need to put a device on them to
track their position for about 30 years or maybe less, so we need to consider power usage of the devices as a constraint.
There are 51 Sami villages, so we need to provide internet access at some specific places. The electricity is available in
Sami villages.

3. Environmental challenges
The Lapland has very cold weather and is mostly snowy, the devices that are installed on the reindeer must be
waterproof and the working temperature of the devices also should be considered as a constraint.

4. Economical challenges
The reindeer herds’ budget for the recommended solution is limited as the income is limited for Sami people. Although
the solution budget can be supported by Kiruna municipality, we need to consider the limited budget of Kiruna
municipality as well.

5. Quality of Service (QoS)

Delay is acceptable in this scenario within 24 hours. We assume that reindeer are not moving more than 10km per
day.

Packet loss should be in an acceptable range.

6. Quality of Experience (QoE)

The positioning of each reindeer should be updated on the application at least every 24 hours.

The positioning error should be in an acceptable range of 10km.

7. Network architecture
For this scenario, which is a Non-critical application, we need to use a decentralized network. As the number of
reindeer is large and changing the battery of the positioning system would be very hard on each reindeer, we need to
provide a low-energy consumption solution. In this case, LPWAN could be an option.

To cover the technical challenge, LPWAN is a low-power solution, we can use sensors with 10km of range (in rural
areas). To cover the economical challenge, LPWAN is a low-cost solution, so Sami people or Kiruna municipality could
afford it.

7.1. System design

As a solution, LoRa WAN, could be a good solution. The sensor should be able to connect to GPS, for tracking the
positions. As an extra option for proposing the solution to Sami peopl,e we can also use the temperature measurement
of reindeer to track their wellness, in most cases, fever could be a sign of not being well of reindeer. For this case, we
need to design the sensors in a way that the sensor on a reindeer connects to GPS twice a day and collects positioning
data, for example, every 12 hours (randomly initiated to reduce the collision of data transmission), and for the rest of
the day, the sensor should be in sleeping mode all the time.
The LoRa sensors should be Class A, (battery-powered sensors for sending data). As an ad-hoc network, routing could
be Reactive in this case, as the collected data of tracking positions are going to be collected every 12 hours, and the
path discovery mechanisms are going to be activated, only when the collected data is ready for transmission.

Also, we can use gossip-based routing, as the path to the destination is not always available.

For sink nodes to transfer the collected data from reindeer to the internet and cloud data server, we need to place
Starlink nodes in specific places in Lapland. In this way, reindeer herds would also have access to the internet when
there is no internet coverage from mobile operators. For example, in figure 1 you can find the Telenor mobile operator
coverage in Kiruna and its suburbs.

Figure 1. Telenor cellular network coverage, which shows that the internet coverage is not accessible in most of the Sami villages

Figure 2. Sensor device connection in an ad-hoc network, using LoRa WAN

 8. Comparison with another solution
Another solution for tracking the location of reindeer is to install Argos transmitters on each of them. There are around
260,000 reindeer in Sweden, if we want to buy 260,000 Argos transmitters, the limited budget of Sami people or Kiruna
municipality would be a constraint. If the budget is not limited, using Argos transmitter would be more precise.
However, precise positioning is not important and error within 10km of the exact location is acceptable for
Sami people.

References:
https://www.argos-system.org/

https://sweden.se/life/people/sami-in-sweden