The Advantage of IP Protocols for Real-Time Monitoring Networks

The use of IP technologies for collecting measurements from real-time monitoring networks and managing equipment distributed across the territory offers many functional advantages:

• native integrability into existing telecommunications networks;
• high levels of "cyber security" thanks to TLS/DTLS encryption standards;
• standardization with respect to other markets converging on IP networks;
• possibility of using innovative application protocols, both existing and future;
• openness through the use of universally recognized protocols.

For all these reasons, regarding real-time monitoring networks in the hydrometric and meteorological fields for civil protection purposes, IP technology is now the established standard in Italy.

Furthermore, speaking specifically of UHF radio data transmission, this choice, when implemented using the RÆVO radios proposed by CAE, allows for low power consumption, high transmission speeds, so reduced acquisition times, and all the reliability of multipath routes.

Owning a telecommunications infrastructure based on RÆVO IP radios, designed to carry UDP protocols, allows the user to choose among various standards to implement communication with the "nodes" (that in this specific case are the dataloggers) of the monitoring network.

Among these standards, CAE has predominantly proposed implementations based on the CoAP protocol, which is particularly suited for creating fast, reliable, and secure networks, as well as for implementing high-value-added services for the monitoring network users. From a technical perspective, it is a lightweight protocol that minimizes overhead, capable of offering innovative REST interfaces over a UDP transport.

Why the choice of UDP? Because narrow-band radio networks are not suitable for efficiently carrying TCP-based protocols due to the higher volume of traffic generated, especially given the recent trend of using half-duplex networks on a single frequency.

By fully leveraging the synergy between the "Datalife Platform" and the CoAP protocol, CAE’s latest generation of monitoring systems features advanced automatic message recognition. This intelligence allows central stations to interpret and adapt communication streams in real-time, tailoring data exchange to the specific configuration and status of each individual datalogger within the network.

The decision by a majority of Functional Centers (Regional Civil Protection Centers) to modernize their networks using these standards is rooted in three core pillars:

1. High-Performance Transmission: Utilizing UDP over IP ensures low-latency data delivery, critical for early warning and civil protection.
2. Robust Security: The adoption of IP-based protocols allows for the seamless integration of modern encryption and authentication standards, safeguarding sensitive environmental data.
3. Maximum Interoperability: By adhering to universal IP and CoAP standards, CAE ensures that monitoring infrastructures remain flexible, scalable, and compatible with broader national and international datasets.

This transition to IP-based technology, pioneered by CAE’s RÆVO and Datalife ecosystems, represents the current state-of-the-art for resilient, real-time environmental monitoring.