# Tracking and Monitoring System Based on LoRa Technology for Lightweight Boats
## 1 Introduction  
Enabling maritime communications have been a big challenge since their origins [1]. Although radio transmission technologies have rapidly evolved during the last times, e.g., WiFi, 4G, WiMAX, etc., maritime scenarios still present particular characteristics that notably make more difficult the deployment of reliable and widely adopted communication systems. There are many services and operations that depend on a trustworthy communication architecture, e.g., ship/boat monitoring, maintenance of navigation marks, goods tracking, data extraction from sensing platforms, unmanned vehicle management, safety operations, voice communications, etc. [2]. Depending on their distance to the shore, two well-differenced scenarios have been identified within the maritime communications ecosystem. Thus, sea areas tens of miles apart from land are considered long range scenarios, while closer areas are considered medium or short range scenarios [3]. Regarding the former, few communication options are available for providing these areas with coverage. Basically, they are based on satellite communications [4], e.g., Argos, Iridium, or Iridium NEXT, or the classic Very/Ultra High Frequency (VHF/UHF) radio links [5]. These technologies provide ships with basic and low data-rate communication capabilities, which in many cases demand a high expenditure. Nevertheless, the focus of this work is on the second case, namely, communications in coastal areas. For these scenarios, a larger set of solutions have been employed for covering them with wireless connectivity. Depending on the application requirements or the boat characteristics, different technologies have been adopted. In the case of boats or ships without payload or power consumption restrictions, cellular communications or WiMAX technologies have been proposed [1; 6]. However, other scenarios such as those comprising sailboats, small autonomous vehicles, or moored sensing platforms, among many others, present severe energetic restrictions as the communication modules are usually powered by batteries. Note that the transmission technologies cited above are not battery friendly as they were not designed for transporting low data-rate/bandwidth communications like those typical in Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios [7]. For that reason, alternative communication technologies are needed for providing these restricted nodes with connectivity with land. Examples of these technologies are those based on Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) [8], which are battery friendly but present other drawbacks related to their short range that increase the WSN management complexity, e.g., multi-hop routing [9]. A novel communication technology that is attracting the attention of both academia and industry is the so-called Low Power--Wide Area Network (LP-WAN). This solution is highly appreciated for IoT applications because it enables long transmissions of more than 15 km in free space [10] with limited power consumption that permit end-node battery's lifetimes of years [7]. Figure 1 shows a comparison of the transmission range and energy efficiency of the communication technologies discussed above, including LP-WAN. Many maritime applications, as some of those previously cited, perfectly match the main IoT systems precepts: (i) need for long range transmissions; (ii) reduced use of bandwidth per message; (iii) limited number of messages per node per day; (iv) big number of simultaneously connected end-devices, and (v) low-cost end-devices. All these characteristics are satisfied by the wide plethora of LP-WAN-based platforms; however, among all of them, LoRa (Long Range) [11] is one of the most prominent so it is receiving great attention by the research community [10; 12]. Figure 1: Comparison of transmission range and energy efficiency provided by different communication technologies employed in maritime scenarios. Therefore, in this work, we present LoRa as a promising enabler for certain maritime activities performed in coastal areas.