Low-Cost LoRaWAN Node for Agro-Intelligence IoT

Abstract

Intelligent agriculture in general, but especially when agricultural fields are very heterogeneous, requires a large number of sensors in order to obtain an effective control and thus increase productivity. This need becomes more evident in vineyards on the farms of the demarcated Douro region due to the specificities of the territory and the vineyards themselves. Thus, it is necessary to have low cost sensors which are, essentially, easy to install and maintain. In the present work, a node with these characteristics was developed, which, in addition, is low consumption and communicates wirelessly through a Long Rang Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) network. To obtain an easy installation, a library of clusters was created for the LoRaWAN network and dedicated to sensors used in agriculture, especially those using an asynchronous serial protocol for intelligent sensors. Three nodes were developed and tested with sensors used in agriculture to measure several environmental parameters (soil and air temperature; wind speed, gust and direction; soil water content, water tension and electrical conductivity; solar radiation; precipitation; atmospheric and vapor pressure; relative humidity; and lightning strikes count). The three nodes send data to a server through an existing gateway on the farm. The data are decoded and sent to an Internet-of-Things analytics platform where it is aggregated, viewed and analyzed. Samples of the data collected are presented. The developed nodes are of small dimensions ( 85 × 65 × 35 m m ), thus making them easy to handle and install. Energy consumption depends on the distance to the gateway, and the number and type of sensors connected to each node. In the implemented cases, the maximum consumption was ≈ 400 μ A . The development of a cluster based library makes the node plug-and-play. The developed nodes will be a great step forward for the use of wireless sensors in smart agriculture in Douro vineyards.