An IIoT System to Monitor 3D–Printed Artifacts via LoRaWAN Embedded Sensors

In this paper we consider an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) system, based on the production of 3D–printed artifacts that are equipped with embedded sensors to monitor some environmental variables such as temperature, humidity, etc. These sensors allow to gather information during the production phase of the artifacts, as well as while they are deployed in their final locations, so that diverse operations (e.g. tuning of the production parameters, predictive maintenance, environmental monitoring) can be undertaken. Monitoring is implemented via LoRaWAN, a Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) that allows to acquire data from the sensors embedded in the artifacts. After a description of the IIoT system, we provide the description of some experimental tests we carried out in this challenging context, aimed at investigating both the reliability of the transmission and the battery life time. The outcomes of such experiments indicate the actual feasibility of the proposed technique.