Design and development of a low-cost wireless network using IoT technologies for a mudslides monitoring system

Abstract

The city of Lima - Peru is affected periodically by mudslides and floods caused by torrential rains near Lima's mountain region. The Jicamarca ravine is especially affected by this phenomenon and is also critical to the population because of its proximity to SEDAPAL's water treatment plant that provides drinking water service to approximately 80% of homes in Lima city. In addition to this, there are a lot of houses located near the riversides affected by the mudslides that could be affected by the overflows. This paper describes the implementation of a low-cost wireless sensor network based on Internet of Things (IoT) technologies designed for monitoring mudslides events made by the association of the Professional School of Electronic Engineering and Telecommunications of the Universidad Nacional Tecnológica de Lima Sur and the Radio Observatorio de Jicamarca, research facility of the Instituto Geofísico del Perú. The network consists of various monitoring stations based on the ESP32 microcontroller and it takes advantage of the Long-Range mode of this device. The radio links created have a range of more than 1 km and all of them are connected to one access point which has a connection to the internet using the IoT technology of the cellular mobile network. The access point sends data to a server in the cloud allowing access to sensors remotely without putting people's lives at risk. This project is part of a program of the Instituto Geofísico del Perú with the goal of implementing a National Mudslide Monitoring Center.