Buried sensor that detects vehicle presence via Earth's magnetic field distortion and reports via LTE-M.

A smart city infrastructure company creating an underground parking occupancy sensor for municipal on-street parking management.
Designing a sensor that can be buried in the road surface, survive vehicle traffic, and reliably detect parking occupancy for 5+ years on non-rechargeable batteries.
The Nordic nRF9160 LTE-M SiP communicates with the cloud directly. An MMC5983MA magnetometer detects changes in the Earth's magnetic field caused by a vehicle above. Two D-cell batteries provide 5+ year power. The housing is machined from 316L stainless steel rated for 20-ton axle loads.
The magnetometer is sampled at 10Hz. A TinyML anomaly detection model (Isolation Forest, 6KB) distinguishes between 'car present' (large magnetic disturbance), 'bicycle/motorcycle' (smaller disturbance), and 'walking pedestrian' (noise). The model self-calibrates daily at 3AM to compensate for temperature drift.
99% parking occupancy detection accuracy. 5-year battery life validated in accelerated testing.
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