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Humpback Whale's LoRa® Gateway-based Smart Products Enable New IoT Infrastructure for Cold Chain Logistics Industry

With the rapid development of China's economy and the gradual improvement of people's living standards, not only is people's awareness of food preservation and quality increasing, but governments at all levels are investing more in the use of cold storage and cold chain logistics to protect people's health and increase farmers' income. At the same time, new-generation information technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are helping cold storage and cold chain builders and operators to meet their continuously growing needs in a more advanced and efficient way.

In January 2020, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued “on the key work of the agriculture, rural areas, and farmers to ensure the timely realization of the overall well-off opinions‘, also known as the 2020 Central Document No. 1, which clearly put forward the start of agricultural warehousing fresh cold chain logistics facilities construction project. Strengthen the overall planning of agricultural cold chain logistics, grading layout and standards development. Arrange central budget investment to support the construction of a number of backbone cold chain logistics base. Such guiding and supporting policies.

Immediately after, the General Office of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs also released "the General Office of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs on the construction of the ‘Agriculture, Rural areas and farmers' field to make up for the short board project library notice", the organization to establish and improve the agricultural and rural infrastructure construction of major project reserves, and to start the implementation of agricultural warehousing and preservation of cold chain logistics facilities construction projects; and the "Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs on accelerating the construction of agricultural warehousing and preservation of cold chain facilities," which pointed out that the state supports family farms, farmers' cooperatives to build the origin of sorting and packaging, refrigeration and preservation, storage and transportation, primary processing and other facilities.

The vigorous promotion of national policies, as well as strong market demand, prompted the construction of cold storage and cold chain logistics in China's development continues to accelerate, but compared with some developed countries, we still have a large gap. At present, the cold chain transportation rates of aquatic products, meat, fruits and vegetables in China are 69%, 57% and 35% respectively, while the average level of this part of the developed countries' index is between 80% and 90%. The low rate of refrigerated transportation makes most of the fresh agricultural products in the transportation process can not be standardized insulation, moisture and refrigeration, resulting in a lot of waste of food.

Unlike previous cold storage and cold chain construction, the new round of cold storage and cold chain construction not only faces higher demand for food quality, but also coincides with the rapid development and widespread application of new generation information technology such as Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The essence of cold chain logistics is to monitor the whole process of temperature and humidity, how can we obtain the temperature and humidity during the whole process of transportation in real time and effectively, as well as track and monitor the assets even their fall and package breakage, etc. to become a key link. With the rapid development of LoRa and other IoT technologies in recent years, a new opportunity has been brought to the cold chain logistics industry.

Humpback Whale (Shanghai) Information Technology Co, Ltd.(hereinafter referred to as "Humpback Whale") is committed to embedding 'positioning + communication + sensing' capability into every intelligent terminal and providing 'cloud, channel and terminal' hardware and software products and services to achieve its goal of becoming a global first-class origin digitalization and full cold chain intelligent data operator.  As a leading company in the industry, Humpback Whale combines the latest IoT technologies such as LoRa with its advanced technology and experience in IoT smart hardware, positioning and navigation, and data analysis to provide an end-to-end solution for the whole process monitoring of the cold chain industry.

The 'AI+ Cold Chain Territorial Intelligent Control System' developed by Humpback Whale is an end-to-end solution covering the whole process of cold chain industry, and its core function module includes intelligent hardware (including communication protocol), cloud platform (including open public interface), and AI data analysis and decision-making. The embedded ZTJ-LINK communication protocol is based on LoRa, which can realize automatic identification between hardware devices, decentralized automatic authentication and self-organizing network without human intervention, effectively avoiding the collision of airports and interference with other communication systems in the system.

In order to adapt to the needs of administrative supervision and traceability in the industry, the agreement also establishes mechanisms for two-way data confirmation, verification, retransmission and retransmission to ensure that the data is real and effective. In order to realize the management of intelligent hardware devices, data collation and analysis and visualization of customer data, Humpback Whale also built its own cloud public platform, and the system is built with HaaS+PaaS+SaaS mainstream architecture, and each layer can be independently opened to users for data docking or system integration. At the same time, it is also convenient for third-party regulatory systems to access.

LoRa is widely used in the logistics industry, including the cold chain, because of its technical features such as wide coverage, low power consumption and high deployment flexibility. Humpback Whale's LoRa technology-based Whale Dart gateway-type smart products consist of a master device and LoRa-based wireless probes (wireless networking sensors), which can be applied to many scenarios such as frozen and refrigerated truck cargo transportation, frozen warehouse cargo storage, unmanned stores, convenience stores, and fruit superstores. They have the following advantages:

1、Excellent wireless penetration characteristics, the wireless signal working at Sub-1GHz can penetrate the relatively closed walls or boxes of cold storage and refrigerated trucks to ensure stable transmission of information.

2. LoRaWAN protocol can meet the demand of high concurrency in the case of dense devices in the field station.

3, Based on LoRa to achieve low power consumption of equipment maintenance-free characteristics, suitable for cold storage scenarios lack of manual inspection, the need for long-cycle use of equipment.

In so many application scenarios, LoRa technology plays an important role in Whale Dart's gateway-type intelligent products. In addition to the above technical advantages, LoRa also has the application characteristics of 'self-assembling, safe and controllable', which saves time and expenses by eliminating the work of punching holes and wiring for users and realizes instant installation and use; users can also flexibly deploy built-in or external networking probes according to different scenarios to achieve multi-dimensional and all-round monitoring.

In addition, with the characteristics of LoRa such as low power consumption, long distance and strong penetration, only one probe needs to be placed in a warehouse of 100-200 square meters to collect temperature and humidity accurately; even in the cold chain vehicle, with strong penetration, the data inside the vehicle can be collected in real time to ensure the stable transmission of information. There is no need to maintain the probe, avoiding manual inspection and equipment maintenance and reducing labor costs.

In practical application, in order to quickly grasp the changes of temperature and humidity, you can set the threshold value for the probe, and when the collected data exceeds the threshold value, it will promptly alarm and notify the relevant personnel for tracking. In addition, the geolocation function of LoRa also empowers the whale dart smart device. After the device is turned on with one key, it can not only monitor the real-time status data, temperature and humidity of the goods, but also monitor the location and path map of the goods in transportation, and upload them to the management platform of whale dart for display, so that users can understand the status information of the goods in real time.

In addition to helping users reduce initial investment and operating costs, the LoRa-based Whale Dart series products can also create new value for users. For example, if goods are found to be spilt or subcontracted during transportation, and cold chain trucks turn off their cold machines and other irregularities, they can be corrected in time, and reports can be exported afterwards to help users analyze operational effectiveness, avoid potential risks and reduce potential costs.

Humpback Whale's 'Whale Dart' series of intelligent terminal products and management platform have been widely used in many enterprises in the dairy industry, cold chain transportation industry, supermarkets, convenience stores, etc. with many advantages mentioned above, and have been highly recognized by customers. For example, Zhengda Food uses Whale Dart series products from the factory in Qinhuangdao and Qingdao to the storage warehouse and to the distributor, realizing real-time monitoring of the temperature and humidity of the warehouse, vehicle and goods in the cold chain transportation.

The company said that through the long-term cooperation with Humpback Whale, the 'Whale Dart' product has helped us avoid losses caused by potential accidents many times; through the real-time monitoring and display of data, we have improved the efficiency of handover with our partners, standardized the operation of drivers, and also reduced the pressure of drivers. In addition to CP Food, many leading companies such as Mengniu, Yakult, Lawson, Ziyanfood Chain, IKEA, Freshippo, Flowerplus and Fruit Day have also adopted the 'Whale Dart' intelligent products to improve their management efficiency and reduce operational costs and waste losses.

Richard Wang, General Manager of Humpback Whale (Shanghai) Information Technology Co., Ltd. said, 'The widespread adoption of IoT technology in the cold chain logistics industry is a major trend. We are proud to work with an industry leader like Semtech to combine LoRa technology with our region-wide innovation to bring new development momentum and richer options to the cold chain logistics industry. Our LoRa-based 'Whale Dart' products have been used by a large number of customers in multiple fields, enhancing their competitive advantage and fully demonstrating that advanced smart network technology can serve society and benefit people.'

Looking ahead, Humpback Whale will use LoRa and other IoT technologies as well as artificial intelligence technologies to expand its ambitions. In addition to continuing to promote the Whale Dart series products in warehouses, freight transportation, stores and other scenarios have been more widely used, the company will also further expand in the fields of fruit and vegetable greenhouses, aquaculture ponds, livestock farming stations, etc. to provide more customers with easy-to-use and cost-effective products.

In addition, Humpback Whale will continue to increase investment in LoRa technology, use LoRaWAN edge computing gateway to solve the problem of network coverage of large cold storage and field stations under partial no WAN access conditions, and adopt LoRa Edge technology to realize asset positioning in animal husbandry, among other means.

According to Huang Xudong, Sales Vice President of SEMTECH China Region, It is Semtech's vision to use innovative technology to bring a better life, and we are pleased to work with innovative companies with a common vision like Humpback Whale to launch LoRa-based Whale Dart gateway-based smart products, which not only provide a powerful aid to the development of the cold chain industry, but also enhance the end-users' quality of life and help increase the efficiency of agriculture and farmers' income. China's cold chain logistics has entered a rapid development lane, and LoRa's features of low power consumption, long range, easy deployment, strong penetration and support for positioning will continue to add innovative momentum to cold chain logistics.

In addition to agricultural products and food, many industries such as pharmaceuticals also cannot lack cold chain support. Temperature detection and control of drugs and vaccines throughout the process is the key to ensuring that drugs and vaccines do not fail. Based on the existing product architecture, Humpback Whale next plans to strengthen the construction of AI+ cold chain platform, with the goal of making it a common platform in the industry, whose functions include:

The first will provide a common HaaS+PaaS data interaction service platform for different manufacturers and different types of devices, solving the problem of fragmentation of IoT devices within the industry.

Secondly, the AI + cold chain platform will be used to introduce machine learning algorithms first in the industry, based on the massive amount of bare data for desensitization, filtering, modeling, correction and other data refinement processing, which provides users with a data realization channel to enhance the value of data; at the same time, all manufacturers of similar data can be cross-referenced and used for model correction reference.

Finally, the device consensus and data co-management network based on distributed computing and blockchain technology can significantly improve data security and system robustness, and provide administrative/third-party supervision functions, which can provide a digital 'new infrastructure' shared digital base for applications such as financial supervision, evidence traceability, anti-counterfeit tracking and network security.