A proposal submitted by A2IR2 researchers has won one of  five research grants awarded by the Nigerian Communications Commission under the 2020 round of its Telecommunications-based Research Innovations from Academics in Nigerian Tertiary Institutions programme. The proposal, titled “Weather WAN: A Wide Area Network of Low-Cost IoT – Compliant Weather Stations” was submitted by a team of Dr. Kayode Ayodele, Dr. O.B. Akinwale, Dr. F.B. Offiong, and Dr. A. A. Ogunseye. It won the sole grant awarded under the IOT Low Power Wide Area Network category.

The goal of the proposal is to develop a network of low-cost, low-powered automatic weather stations which can be deployed around the country, potentially leading to an increase in the national density of weather stations. In order to ensure high-reliability, low-maintenance operation, a novel power supercapacitor-based power supply system will be developed. A hybrid star/mesh communication architecture will be developed, incorporating the nationwide cellular network infrastructure as a backbone, along with low-powered LoRaWAN communications systems for last-mile communications with the AWS. The project is expected to run for two years.