Enabling LoRaWAN across the entire “Bahn”

Customer challenge

German Rail (Deutsche Bahn, DB) is one of the world’s largest rail operator and transportation companies, with over 300.000 employees and pan-European operations. DB is implementing various LoRaWAN use cases across departments, concerning ICEs (high speed trains), stations, maintenance depots and office buildings. Use cases range from synchronising station clocks and passenger counting to monitoring of spare parts inventory, carriage condition, building utilisation and electricity usage.

The challenge is to have a LoRaWAN network server stack embedded in DB’s private cloud, while complying with its strict internal security policies. And to integrate our software with existing systems and IoT infrastructure for seamless operations.

Solution

DB selected The Things Industries to offer a customised template that allows for a self hosted network server. One that can be securely configured, updated and scaled with AWS Elastic Container Service. We integrated our APIs with DB’s IoT platform, routing LoRaWAN telemetry data to and from its applications, invoking functions on that data, and updating the IoT device registry. This allows DB to interface solely with its own, existing systems, while leveraging the full functionality of our network server.

For this successful implementation, DB relies on our deep understanding of the LoRaWAN protocol, security, scalability and devops.

Solution benefits:

• Optimised space utilization of office buildings

• Accurate station clock synchronisation

• Understanding passenger flows and environmental metrics in railway stations

• Knowing exact stock levels in ICE maintenance depots

Why DB chose The Things Industries:

• Deep LoRaWAN expertise

• Plug ‘n play stack for AWS IoT Core, AWS private cloud and Single Sign On

• Self hosted, on-premises deployment

• Secure device provisioning with LoRa Alliance interoperable join server

• Class B and C support. Firmware-over-the-air update service

• No vendor lock-in

The Things Industries services are designed to interact seamlessly with the protocols and systems you already support. Start benefiting from The Things Stack features now: Discover The Things Stack