LoRaWAN Monitoring for Vaccines and Labs with the R1520-LG:
How Robustel & Koolzone provide reliable sensing inside ultra-low temperature freezers and resilient backhaul across mixed cellular networks.
Case Study – Fast Facts
Location
UK & Europe
Industry
Smart Cities / Cold Storage / Medical cold-chain
Product(s)
- R1520-LG
- RCMS
- Smart Roaming
End Customer
KoolZone – koolzone.com
KoolZone provides Monitoring-as-a-Service for cold-chain and environmental assets using plug-and-play Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) sensors and a cloud platform. The company monitors medical-grade fridges, ultra-low temperature (–80 °C) freezers, liquid nitrogen tanks, and power status across laboratories, hospitals, universities, and logistics fleets. Deployments span four continents and include high-profile research environments where uptime, data integrity, and compliance are critical.
Challenges
Temperature sensors must function inside enclosures that attenuate radio signals, making traditional Wi-Fi/Bluetooth unworkable. The estate also requires resilient 3G/4G backhaul across regions where roaming SIM behaviour can be inconsistent, while operations teams need timely alerts and accurate, legally compliant reports without constant site visits.
Results
LoRaWAN sensors communicate reliably from within freezers to nearby gateways; data flows to the cloud application for real-time alerting and scheduled, compliant reporting. Using the R1520-LG with RCMS improves fleet-wide visibility and, with Smart Roaming, stabilises cellular connectivity across multi-network SIMs raising overall uptime and reducing on-site interventions.
Keeping critical samples safe in freezers, rooms, and vehicles
Modern labs and vaccine supply chains depend on uninterrupted temperature evidence. In practice, that means reading accurate values from inside faraday-like enclosures, streaming them to the cloud, and acting on deviations before stock is at risk. The solution must work quietly for years, across multiple facilities and vehicles, without adding complexity for clinical staff.
KoolZone delivers this through a LoRaWAN-based sensing platform and a managed cloud service. The Robustel R1520-LG sits at the edge to bridge on-site sensors to the internet, while RCMS gives engineering teams the ability to monitor, configure, and maintain the deployed gateways from anywhere.
Business Challenges
1. Sensing inside faraday-like enclosures
Freezers and refrigerators act as faraday cages, attenuating or blocking conventional short-range links. Running cables through door seals is a contamination and maintenance risk, and battery life suffers at low temperatures.
Day to day, missed readings or delayed alerts can translate to product spoilage, repeat experiments, and costly incident reviews. The sensor-to-gateway hop must be robust enough to reach out of the enclosure without modifying the appliance.
2. Resilient cellular backhaul across regions
Multi-network roaming SIMs promise reliability, but standard “automatic network selection” can still stick to a poor-performing carrier, causing intermittent outages just when alerts are needed most.
For operations, inconsistent backhaul means false escalations, unnecessary site visits, and a diluted trust in the monitoring service.
3. Audit-ready reporting with minimal site effort
Regulated environments expect clean, time-aligned records and event trails, not spreadsheets stitched together after the fact. The platform must generate compliant reports and send the right alerts to the right people.
If reporting takes manual effort, teams lose hours on admin and risk gaps during inspections or internal quality reviews.
Solution Overview
At each site, LoRaWAN sensors placed inside appliances transmit readings through the enclosure to a nearby R1520-LG gateway. The gateway aggregates sensor traffic and uses cellular broadband to forward data to the customer’s cloud platform for dashboards, alerts, and scheduled reports. Engineering teams manage the gateway estate centrally with RCMS for status, configuration, and firmware—reducing routine site work.
Why KoolZone chose the R1520-LG:
- Fit-for-purpose LoRaWAN edge: Acts as the on-site bridge between in-freezer sensors and the internet, without modifying appliances.
- Resilient cellular behaviour: Smart Roaming improves real-world performance of roaming SIMs to keep the estate online in mixed-coverage regions.
- Industrial build and stability: Designed for unattended operation with self-recovery mechanisms, suitable for labs, hospitals, and vehicles.
- Cloud fleet management (RCMS): Centralised monitoring and configuration streamline operations and help standardise deployments.
Key Outcomes
With reliable sensing from inside enclosures and stable backhaul, the service operates quietly in the background. Alerts arrive in time to save stock; teams can prove conditions with clean reports; and the network footprint is straightforward to maintain across sites and vehicles.
“The partnership between KoolZone and Robustel means that we are able to reliably and securely monitor the valuable contents of freezers in all environments. Clients who have deployed our solutions have peace of mind 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We had a -80 that went down recently. No one was on site at the research laboratory but we were able to quickly recover the contents, avoiding all losses.” – Steve Miller – Managing Director of Koolzone.
- Verified cold-chain continuity: Continuous, accurate temperature records from appliances, including ultra-low freezers.
- Faster incident response: Real-time notifications enable timely intervention before contents are compromised.
- Fewer site visits: Remote fleet management reduces travel and ad-hoc troubleshooting.
- Audit-ready documentation: Scheduled, compliant reports support inspections and internal QA.
- Higher service uptime: More stable roaming behaviour limits communication gaps during critical periods.
Featured Products
Robustel R1520-LG LoRaWAN Gateway
RCMS Device Management Platform
Smart Roaming
