Gateway Mesh in the Real World: Building a LoRaWAN® Network Across an 18-Hectare Industrial Site

The Challenge: When LoRaWAN Coverage Is Not the Only Problem

What happens when LoRaWAN devices can reach a gateway, but connecting that gateway to the wider network is the difficult part?

Long-range radio coverage does not remove the need for backhaul. A gateways for LoRaWAN still requires a route to the network, typically through Ethernet, fiber, WiFi, cellular, or another IP connection. Across a large facility, however, the ideal location for radio reception may be nowhere near existing communications infrastructure.

For Koelus, a subsidiary of Aritium that develops IoT- and AI-based solutions for industrial environments, that challenge became very real during a water-monitoring modernization project in Madrid, Spain.

The approximately 18-hectare industrial plant required water consumption to be measured across 18 points distributed among different areas and process stages. Existing infrastructure provided limited visibility, while obsolete meters lacked communication capabilities. Extending wired connections throughout the site would add cabling costs, installation work, and the possibility of disrupting ongoing production.

The deployment had to account for:

• 18 hectares of industrial space
• Measurement points distributed across multiple zones
• Legacy metering infrastructure with limited connectivity
• Physical distance and complex plant layouts
• The cost of extending cabling to new locations
• Construction work that could interfere with ongoing operations

The issue was therefore bigger than getting a LoRaWAN signal to each meter. Gateway locations also had to connect back to the network without turning the project into a major cabling exercise.

The Solution: A LoRaWAN Network Using Gateway Mesh

Koelus addressed that constraint with a private LoRaWAN architecture built around Gateway Mesh.

Gateway Mesh allows relay gateways to forward LoRaWAN traffic wirelessly toward a border gateway, reducing the need for conventional backhaul at every gateway location.

In this deployment, secondary gateways relayed traffic toward a central master, allowing the radio infrastructure to be placed according to site requirements rather than the availability of wired backhaul.

From the meter to the existing control system

At field level, pulse collectors transmit water-consumption readings wirelessly. The secondary gateways carry that traffic across the plant toward the RAK7391 master, which serves as the central aggregation point for the mesh.

From there, Koelus MSE processes the incoming information, while the Koelus Platform can add visualization, alerts, analytics, and predictive capabilities. Those outputs can then feed established BMS, SCADA, or PLC environments through standard industrial protocols, extending the facility’s existing systems rather than forcing their replacement.

The important architectural shift is simple: the gateway no longer has to be placed only where conventional backhaul is easiest to provide. Gateway Mesh gives the deployment another path between the field and the point where the network connects to the rest of the industrial infrastructure.

The Deployment: Gateway Mesh in a Real Industrial Environment

The architecture became tangible once it was distributed across the plant itself. Instead of concentrating connectivity in one convenient location, Koelus placed each part of the network where it could serve a specific field role across the industrial site.

The deployment included four RAKwireless gateways: one WisGate Connect Smart Building as the master gateway and three WisGate Edge Lite 2 RAK7268 units as secondary gateways. Eighteen pulse collectors captured water-consumption readings from measurement points distributed across the plant.

At the measurement points

New water meters were paired with pulse collectors at the monitored locations. The collectors captured water-consumption data and transmitted it over LoRaWAN, allowing readings from distributed points across the facility to reach the wireless network without new communications cabling to each meter.

Three Secondary Gateways Across the Plant

Three WisGate Edge Lite 2 RAK7268 units served as secondary gateways in different areas of the facility. They received LoRaWAN traffic from field devices within their coverage areas and forwarded it through Gateway Mesh toward the master gateway. This allowed gateway coverage to be placed where it was needed without extending conventional backhaul to every secondary location.

One Master Gateway at the Aggregation Point

One WisGate Connect Smart Building served as the master gateway and central aggregation point. Traffic forwarded from the three secondary gateways converged there before continuing into the digital infrastructure used by the Koelus MSE.

Together, the pulse collectors and four gateways created a wireless path from distributed water-meter locations to the plant’s central monitoring environment. Secondary gateways brought connectivity closer to the measurement areas, while the master gateway brought their traffic together at the network’s central aggregation point.

The Result: Less Infrastructure, More Visibility

The payoff was visible on both sides of the project: less physical infrastructure to add and more operational information available from the plant.

Infrastructure avoided

Water-consumption readings could be collected wirelessly without extending cable routes to each measurement location. That removed the need for trenching and cable trays, reduced associated construction work, and helped avoid production downtime during installation.

Visibility gained

The deployment included 18 pulse collectors across 18 water measurement points in different zones and process stages. This gave operators a more granular view of consumption and more context for identifying anomalies and opportunities for optimization.

Existing workflows retained

The additional IoT data did not have to live in an isolated monitoring system. Readings and insights from the Koelus environment can be incorporated into established management workflows, giving operators a broader view of water use without replacing the control infrastructure already in place.

The result was more than wireless metering. The plant expanded its view of a critical resource without requiring a comparable expansion of wired infrastructure. That is the operational value the content strategy calls for: less cabling and installation complexity, with greater flexibility in how the network reaches the areas that matter.

Beyond Water Monitoring: Building an IoT Infrastructure

Water monitoring was the first operational need, not the limit of the system. With the private LoRaWAN network and Koelus MSE already in place, the site now has a foundation that can accommodate additional industrial applications as priorities change. 

Koelus identifies several possible next steps: energy optimization, environmental monitoring, equipment monitoring, predictive maintenance, and asset tracking.

The bigger value is what comes after the first use case. Rather than remaining a single-purpose water-monitoring installation, the architecture can evolve as new requirements emerge. Each additional application can build on infrastructure that is already established, turning the original project into a broader industrial IoT foundation.

The Gateway Mesh Takeaway

The Koelus deployment points to a broader lesson for industrial LoRaWAN: radio reach and gateway connectivity are two different design problems. A device may be able to communicate over long distances, yet the most effective gateway location can still be far from convenient Ethernet, fiber, cellular, or other IP access. Gateway Mesh becomes especially useful when those two requirements do not line up.

By relaying traffic from secondary gateways toward a master, the Madrid project gave Koelus more freedom to distribute connectivity around a complex industrial property without providing an independent wired backhaul path at every point. The resulting architecture also demonstrates a model that Koelus can adapt to other large facilities facing similar constraints.

Put the gateway where the network needs it, not simply where the nearest cable ends.

One LoRaWAN network. Greater reach. Less infrastructure.