Hybrid Architecture Based System for the Establishment of Sustainable Environment in a Construction Site with 433 MHz LoRa and 2.4 GHz Zigbee

Abstract

The rapid development of technology has empowered us to achieve resilient infrastructure to establish a sustainable ecosystem. The construction site is one of the highest risk jobs for accident-related fatalities and injuries globally. From the previous studies, it is concluded that untrained or inexperienced workers were responsible for 40% of work-related accidents and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) report concludes that inadequate working experience, knowledge, and safety awareness were the key causes of fatal accidents in the construction industry. Moreover, it is identified from previous studies that digital technology such as IoT with the assistance of wireless sensors can enhance the safety of construction sites. Based on this advantage, this study has implemented the hybrid architecture with the integration of the 2.4 GHz Zigbee, 433 MHz long-range (LoRa), and Wi-Fi communication protocol to monitor the health status of workers and construction sites and also to identify workers’ equipment wearing status in real-time scenarios. The proposed architecture is realized by implementing customized hardware, based on 2.4 GHz Zigbee, 433 MHz long-range (LoRa), and Wi-Fi. Furthermore, in the analysis of the evaluation metrics of LoRa, it is concluded that the lowest sensitivity is observed for SF 12 at BW 41.7 kHz and the highest is observed for SF 7 at BW 500 kHz; the maximum value data rate is observed at BW 500 kHz at CR 1 for SF 7, and the minimum data rate is observed at BW 41.7 at CR 4 for SF 12. In the future, the customized hardware will be implemented in different construction environments resolving possible challenges that empower to implementation of the proposed architecture in wide extensions.