LoRa Network Based Multi-Wireless Sensor Nodes and LoRa Gateway for Agriculture Application

Abstract

Our research proposed the prototypes of a Long Range (LoRa) network for agriculture application, which focuses on low-cost and effectiveness with multi-wireless environment sensor nodes in a network. each sensors node consisting of several sensors such as a soil moisture sensor, a temperature and humidity sensor, a raindrops sensor, and a light intensity sensor. The soil moisture sensor has been designed with 4 copper sensing-rods that a longest copper rod act as a ground signal level and other copper sensing-rods using for measures moisture at each soil depth. The different levels of soil depth with respect to the ground surface. A Heltec LoRa esp32 sx1276 acts as a LoRa wireless communication module for long-range environment data transfer. The proposed network that operating with two wireless communication frequency bands, 925.2MHz for node-to-gateway communication and 2.4GHz (WLAN) for gateway-to-cloud communication. Furthermore, the proposed network with three wireless sensor nodes and a single LoRa gateway was experimental. From the experimental results, the sensor node able to environmental sensing and transfer data to the gateway. The environmental data of soil moisture under the ground surface 20cm, 40cm, and 60 cm more than 90% accuracy compared to the standard instrument. Additionally, the LoRa transceiver range is approximately 600 meters (Non-line-of-sight: NLOS) and the LoRa gateway automatically transmits environmental data to the cloud storage every 15 seconds.