A network of low cost environmental water sensors providing real time environmental quality data are in high demand by state agencies, environmental agencies and industrial users. In the USA the gap in this market is being addressed by a competition called the Nutrient Sensor Challenge where technologies are required for a particular market sector estimated to be $120-150 Million US dollars.

Over the last 4 years as Tellab have worked in collaborative research projects to develop microfluidic technology that meets the requirement of this market and the technology Aquamonitrix is one of the finalists in the Nutrient challenge.

While the engineering and chemical analytical system is well developed further work is needed on the communications protocols and in making the device smart. There is also huge potential to combine water quality measurements from the instrument with other data such as rainfall, GIS, etc to allow for smart decisions to be made regarding fertiliser application, discharge protocols and also allow the data to be predictive so that decisions can be made at an early stage to prevent pollution incidents. This pollution has a cost of hundreds of Billions of euro in Europe alone. It now very important to get this technology commercialised before technologies are developed in other territories (e.g. USA or China).

The first stage of this project is to incorporate robust and fit for use communications technologies into the sensor networks so that they can communicate with other sensors in the network and also with the users of the technology. All possible communications technology would be considered for each location and the best technology chosen. Aquamonitrix will therefore need to be capable of running a range of technologies such as 2.5G-4G cellular, LoRa, Sigfox, NB-IOT Narrowband IoT, Satellite communication etc. Decisions will be made on the best technologies to integrate into the device during the course of this project based upon capacity, cost, power usage etc.

The second stage of the project is to allow smart decisions to made by combining other available data sources to maximise the impact that the data can have and also to maximise the commercial opportunities for the technology. It is important to ensure that this technology is developed quickly to solve specific problems defined in European, USA and Chinese markets.

New development concept of the device.