2023 Volume 46 Issue 1 Pages 11-19
In mountainous areas where depopulation and aging are progressing, some communities have no access to public waterworks and thus rely on their own community water supplies. Mindful of the large burden of operation on, we proposed the use of low-power wide-area (LPWA) network technologies to support the residents. We fabricated simple radio communication modules and conducted experiments in woods, resulting in the observation that the radio waves in the 920 MHz band attenuated inversely proportionally to approximately fifth power of the propagation distance. From this observation, we predicted the path gain of radio wave propagations around a water supply facility and observed an agreement of the predicted and measured values with the coefficient of determination R2 = 0.95 (p < 0.01, N = 20) . An attempt to monitor the water level in the treated water storage tank in real time was successful in minimizing the frequent visit and checking by the resident in charge, reducing the burden on the resident. In addition, the water level can now be recorded as data, which may enable us to develop precautionary measures against water shortage by issuing early notice to the residents in the future. This study shows the practicality of LPWA network technologies in the management of water supply facilities in small communities in mountainous areas.
