LPWAN SOLUTIONS
River and Waterway Salinity and Conductivity Monitoring
Strengthening water quality control through near real-time salinity and conductivity monitoring
Improved decision-making with near real-time data collection
Enhanced water management using IoT technology
Mitigating water quality issues with proactive salinity surveillance
Solution
The River and Waterway Salinity and Conductivity Monitoring Solution provides near-real-time electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (TDS), salinity concentration, water temperature, and salt-intrusion alerts for natural rivers, estuaries, agricultural catchments, and urban waterways without the expense or complexity of traditional wired telemetry. Engineered for continuous outdoor field deployment in raw surface water, the system arrives fully pre-configured out of the box to automatically stream encrypted sensor telemetry directly to the Ellenex Software Platform.
This IoT-driven surface water quality monitoring solution offers key operational benefits:
Zero-Touch Plug-and-Play Setup: Shipped fully pre-programmed for immediate field deployment in under 5 minutes without requiring local software setup, driver downloads, or manual developer provisioning.
Flexible Dual LPWAN Wireless Protocols: Choice of LoRaWAN (ideal for private catchment networks or agricultural districts with zero ongoing airtime fees) or NB-IoT / LTE-M (for direct-to-tower public cellular connectivity across spread-out municipal river basins).
Advanced 4-Electrode Sensing Architecture: Employs an alternating current 4-electrode conductivity cell that eliminates polarization effects and resists biofouling buildup in raw natural waters.
Heavy-Duty Submersible Construction: Built with an IP68-rated submersible, corrosion-resistant sensor head paired with an IP68 UV-stabilized transmitter enclosure designed for extreme outdoor weathering.
Low Total Cost of Ownership: Powered by an internal replaceable 3.6V Lithium battery combined with ultra-low-power firmware management to achieve maintenance-free operational lifespans of up to 10 years.
Rapid Operational ROI: Accelerates financial returns by protecting crop irrigation intake quality, detecting estuarine salt wedge migration early, eliminating manual field grab sampling, and simplifying compliance reporting. Learn More
Easy Install
Pre-Configured
Secure
Quick ROI
Rugged Design
Battery Operated
Our River and Waterway Salinity and Conductivity Monitoring Solution provides a comprehensive approach to efficient water quality management and watershed protection. By leveraging cutting-edge technology in four-electrode conductivity sensors and long-range wireless telemetry, environmental agencies, agricultural authorities, and municipal water utilities can track, control, and optimize water quality monitoring in real time. The result is a future-proof solution that not only addresses current operational challenges—detecting sudden salinity spikes and tracking estuarine salt wedges—but also adapts to the changing demands of environmental compliance, ultimately protecting crop irrigation quality, aquatic habitats, and regional water security.
Connecting river reaches, estuarine mixing zones, and agricultural drainage networks to a central digital network transforms static surface water catchments into an intelligent hydrological monitoring network. By streaming continuous electrical conductivity and salinity telemetry directly to a cloud dashboard, water resource managers gain total visibility over freshwater supplies while eliminating spatial sampling blind spots.
Resource Sustainability
Continuous electrical conductivity tracking directly protects freshwater reserves and agricultural soil health by detecting salt-front movements, brackish intrusion, and high-salinity runoff before water is drawn into crops. Monitoring live salinity shifts in estuaries allows water authorities to manage river environmental flows dynamically, preventing soil salinization and safeguarding sensitive aquatic species. Automating remote water quality tracking cuts down physical sampling drives, conserving fuel and reducing carbon emissions.
Compliance Assurance
Automated continuous logging from IP68 4-electrode sensors generates an unalterable, audit-ready digital ledger of electrical conductivity, total dissolved solids, salinity levels, and water temperature. Replacing manual grab-sample collection with automated telemetry delivered straight to the Ellenex Software Platform enables agricultural districts, industrial facilities, and municipal utilities to effortlessly prove compliance with regional environmental protection salinity limits, discharge regulations, and EPA surface water quality mandates.
Battery-Powered River And Waterway Salinity And Conductivity Monitoring With LoRaWAN® Or NB-IoT / LTE-M Connectivity For Environmental And Municipal Networks.
Core Operational Capabilities
4-Electrode Conductivity and Salinity Sensing Element.
IP68 Weatherproof Sensor
IP66 UV-Protected Enclosure
Up to 10-Year Battery Life
Cloud / API / SCADA Integration
River and Waterway Salinity Monitoring with Battery-Operated Salinity Sensors
WQ-RR-CS
In a world where 30% of freshwater fish species are threatened with extinction, effective water quality monitoring is more than a necessity, it's a call to action for the survival of our ecosystems.
Industrial Outdoor LoRaWAN Gateway Specifications
For customers deploying the LoRaWAN package, the high-performance industrial gateway provides complete self-managed coverage. It is pre-configured to forward packet data to the Ellenex Platform.
System Architecture
The integrated Solution telemetry platform is designed around a dual-LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) hardware architecture, giving operators the flexibility to deploy either LoRaWAN or cellular-based (supporting NB-IoT and LTE Cat M1) network configurations depending on local infrastructure and regional topology. Both communication technologies represent the cutting edge of industrial IoT, designed to penetrate challenging physical barriers and achieve multi-kilo meter propagation distances while maintaining extremely low electrical current draws.
The Ellenex telemetry pipeline follows a streamlined 4-step end-to-end data flow designed to give customers total choice over their network infrastructure and software platform:
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Sensor: The single Ellenex battery-powered field device directly measures physical parameters, digitizes analog signals, applies factory calibration parameters, packages telemetry into AES-128 encrypted payloads, and manages low-power sleep modes within a unified unit. Learn More:
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Wireless Infrastructure Options:
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Option A (LoRaWAN Option): Transmits sub-GHz radio packets to an Ellenex Pre-Configured Outdoor Gateway. The gateway acts as a transparent Layer-1/Layer-2 RF-to-IP bridge. Learn More
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Option B (Cellular NB-IoT / LTE-M Option): Transmits encrypted telemetry directly across licensed 3GPP cellular networks to public mobile base station towers. Learn More.
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3. Network Core & Data Routing Layer: Encrypted sub-GHz packets are securely routed from the gateway to the Ellenex Network Server (LNS). The LNS manages crucial network functions—including device authentication, payload decryption, and frame deduplication—ensuring clean, secure sensor data is seamlessly delivered to Ellenex Software Platform.
4. Data Processing & Platform Visualization: All telemetry is ingested, decoded, and visualized seamlessly within the Ellenex Cloud Software Platform. The software transforms raw sensor data into actionable insights through real-time dashboards, historical trend analysis, threshold alerting, and device health management.
Connectivity & Visualisation Platform
With its advanced features and ease of use, Ellenex’s software platform enables effective monitoring and management of remote operations—ensuring efficient, sustainable, and reliable resource management.
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Encrypted ultra-low power communication protocol.
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Advanced device inventory.
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Integration of APIs for enterprise systems.
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Multi-tenant role-based access control.
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Data export and import.
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White-label platform for enterprise runs on private accounts.
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Variable alarm setting for high and low thresholds and multi-channel alerting.
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Sampling and transmission interval configuration.
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Transmission condition configuration.
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Other configurations and customizations available on request.
Ellenex's software platform is a comprehensive, user-friendly solution specifically designed for remote monitoring and management.
The platform offers a robust range of features tailored for off grid, distributed, and critical operations, including:
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Real-Time Data Visualization: Monitor live operational status, levels, and key metrics across all your locations from a centralized dashboard.
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Customizable Alerts & Notifications: Receive instant warnings for threshold breaches, sudden drops, or anomalous activity before minor issues become costly failures.
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Historical Data Analysis & Predictive Analytics: Track consumption patterns, analyze usage trends, and forecast future demand to optimize maintenance and supply schedules.
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Seamless System & API Integration: Easily feed raw or aggregated telemetry into your existing enterprise software, SCADA, or ERP systems using Ellenex’s secure Open API.
Key Benefits
Ellenex Software Platform Dashboard
Individual Device Details & Data Analytics View
Parameter Configuration and GPS Location View
Device Management Interface
Historical Data & Performance Analytics
Remote Command and Downlink Control Log
Ellenex Asset Monitoring App
Custom alert and Notification Setup Interface
Data Export and Reporting Interface
Webhook and Data Forwarding Interface
Sensor Calibration and Formula Configuration
Integration Options
A core competitive advantage of the solution is its complete pre-configured, plug-and-play design. Both the cellular and LoRaWAN (with local gateway) variants arrive fully configured and ready for connection to the Ellenex platform out of the box, eliminating the complexities of local software setup, sensor programming, or manual network registration.
The end-to-end package includes the following integration characteristics:
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Zero Technical Hassles: No extra power tools, driver setup, or developer configurations are required. Deployment is completed in under 5 minutes.
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Pre-Configured Gateway Provisioning: The industrial outdoor gateway is pre-commissioned to automatically bind with the Ellenex LNS stack. Once powered via PoE or DC, it immediately discovers sensors, decrypts the payloads, and relays them directly to the centralized cloud dashboard, seamlessly routing data to the Ellenex Platform.
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Pre-Configured SIM & Connectivity: For NB-IoT deployments, the transmitter is shipped with a pre-configured 4FF Nano-SIM card and active carrier subscription, ready to transmit on regional networks immediately upon power-up.
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Unified Fleet Visualization: Once powered on, both device variants automatically check in and populate their respective live measurement streams to the user’s centralized mobile app or web dashboard.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does 4-electrode alternating current technology prevent measurement errors in raw river water?
Traditional 2-electrode sensors suffer from polarization effects and biofouling errors because electrical current passes through the same contacts that measure voltage. The 4-electrode sensing element separates current-driving electrodes from voltage-sensing electrodes and applies an alternating current (AC) signal. This prevents ion accumulation at the contact surfaces, eliminates cable resistance errors, and delivers stable, linear electrical conductivity (EC) readings even in turbid or organic-rich surface waters.
What installation method prevents the submersible sensor head from being swept away or damaged during river flood events?
The IP68 submersible sensor is connected to a heavy-duty polyurethane cable. In fast-flowing rivers or tidal estuaries, field personnel secure the probe inside a perforated protective stilling tube or PVC conduit anchored securely to a bridge abutment, pier, or riverbank post. This allows raw surface water to flow past the electrodes while shielding the sensor body from floating logs, debris impacts, and strong hydraulic forces.
How does the Ellenex Software Platform calculate total dissolved solids and salinity from raw electrical conductivity?
The Ellenex Software Platform features an integrated formula configuration engine. Raw electrical conductivity (uS/cm or mS/cm) and live water temperature readings are automatically processed using mathematical scaling algorithms and standard conversion factors. The platform then derives real-time total dissolved solids (TDS in mg/L or ppm) and salinity concentration (g/kg or PSU) for display on live user dashboards.
How are irrigation district managers notified on the Ellenex Software Platform when estuarine salt water encroaches on freshwater intakes?
The Ellenex Software Platform incorporates a dynamic multi-channel alert engine. Users can establish custom upper EC or salinity threshold boundaries (such as a warning when electrical conductivity exceeds 1500 uS/cm). If tidal surges or low river flows allow saline water to push upstream past the intake point, the platform immediately broadcasts real-time alerts via SMS, email, or mobile app push notifications, enabling operators to pause pumping before salty water reaches crops.
What factors influence the choice between private LoRaWAN and cellular LPWAN connectivity for catchment salinity monitoring?
The LoRaWAN option (-L) is ideal for private agricultural irrigation districts, mining sites, or environmental catchments where an Ellenex Outdoor Gateway can provide localized network coverage with zero recurring SIM data fees. The Cellular LPWAN option (-N) uses NB-IoT/LTE-M connectivity to stream data directly to mobile phone towers, making it optimal for geographically dispersed river networks or municipal water monitoring points where cellular coverage is already established.
How does temperature compensation ensure consistent electrical conductivity readings across seasonal weather shifts?
Water electrical conductivity increases as temperature rises. To maintain measurement accuracy across cold winters and hot summers, the sensor probe incorporates an internal precision temperature sensor. The internal microprocessor continuously measures fluid temperature and applies automatic temperature compensation to normalize readings to standard 25°C reference values, ensuring accurate historical trend comparisons year-round.
What routine maintenance is needed to keep the 4-electrode salinity sensor functioning accurately over long field deployments?
The module operates completely maintenance-free using an internal, replaceable 3.6V primary Lithium battery (LiSOCl2) that lasts up to 10 years on standard reporting schedules. Physical servicing is limited to periodic field checks: field technicians perform a quick visual inspection and use a soft brush or water spray to clear any sediment, algae, or debris from the 4-electrode cell window before performing standard calibration checks.
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