# An Architecture for Reliable Transportation of Delicate Goods
## 3 Technical and Domain Contextualization
### Technical Options  
Conceptually, the solution consists of a monitoring module containing sensors, which collect data on transport conditions, and a processor that does the local control and ensures the export of the data, so that they can be provided to those involved in the transport process. The most simplified solution would be to extract the data upon delivery to the recipient, and forward such data, in some way, to the involved. If there are non-compliances, the recipient would be immediately informed and would have instant evidence to request the appropriate compensation. The company providing the service, on the other hand, would bear the full responsibility for the non-compliances and would have to pay the losses or trigger the existing insurance. Moreover, the same company would hardly have the means to identify (internally or before subcontractors), those responsible for the non-compliances. The proposed solution builds on the monitoring of environment variables, or other variables, that are supposed to be kept within certain acceptable ranges, otherwise signaling situations that may have a degrading impact on the transported merchandise. Temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, ventilation, light or other forms of radiation are some of the environment variables that might be necessary to monitor. In addition to these, it may also be useful to measure the displacement, inclination, speed and acceleration of the load. These variables are monitored by sensors connected to a microprocessor that, among other things, collects the values, temporarily saves them and, whenever possible, sends them to the cloud. The merchandise could also be very distinct, in many ways. It may consist of small things to huge containers, requiring different solutions for an effective supervision of the transportation conditions. It could be perishable goods, live animals or very delicate goods. The solution must be usable under any of these situations. Thus, size and portability are the first main requirements, and so the device with all the components should be small. Also, the transportation of the merchandise could take from a few days to several weeks or even months. During all this period, the monitoring device should be able to monitor the conditions of transportation. Therefore, the energy autonomy is probably the most critical feature and is deeply interrelated with all the other requirements of the solution: portability, for instance, implies the use of batteries; in turn, minimizing the size of the device constrains the battery capacity. Everything on the device should be idealized to save energy, promoting battery life. As such, both the sensors and microprocessor, and even other required components, must be based on ultra-low power technology. The microprocessor, which is the most energy demanding component, should stay in sleep mode as much time as possible. Moreover, the solution should use digital sensors with configurable trigger limits and/or working ranges. The goal is that the sensors can be continuously measuring the environment, without the support of the microprocessor. Only if some measure goes out of the bounds should the sensor wake the microprocessor up to save/report the non-compliance of the transport conditions. Therefore, only the non-compliant measures are processed, and all the others are ignored. This strategy is critical for the feasibility of a solution. Once a sensor triggers an interrupt, a suitable action follows. The final goal is that the customer, and the main supplier of the transportation service, be informed about the event behind the interrupt. Conceptually, there are two main options for such notification. One is to pass the data to the players immediately, at the moment when the non-compliance is detected. However, as attractive as it may sound, this approach has several problems, some of which are insurmountable. Energy autonomy could be a critical problem because the available solutions that fit into this approach are quite demanding.