IoT-AGRISENS: A LoRa-BASED SMART AGRICULTURE MONITORING AND DECISION-MAKING SYSTEM WITH AMALGAMATION OF IoT AND CLOUD-ENABLED SERVICES

Acquiring real-time agricultural data for field monitoring and crop yield predictions is difficult. Real-time sensors enable field monitoring and agricultural yield modeling. Existing systems for real-time data modeling and field monitoring are inadequate. The majority of smart agricultural systems only measure air temperature and humidity, and these systems are unable to send sensor data over long distances. In addition to a data transmission range of 100 meters, these devices have limitations for agricultural field coverage. Therefore, crop yields are below expectations. The problems are addressed through an architectural framework. An agri-field architecture that monitors air temperature and humidity, soil temperature, soil moisture, and soil pH in real time is presented. The design uses open-source platforms and features a transmitter and receiver. The WSAMU (Wireless Smart Agriculture Monitoring Unit) analyzes and sends environmental and field data to a LoRa gateway. The LoRa gateway allows the WSAMU to send data to a WARMU (Wireless Agriculture Receiver Monitoring Unit). The following key experiments validated the proposed architecture: (a) Five sensors were deployed with a WSAMU attached to LoRa, HC-12, and Wi-Fi networks and used in agriculture. (b) An experimental setup was arranged to measure the operational and non-operational current supplies of 0.8840 A·s and 1.0424 A¸s, respectively, with regard to the contributions of a WSAMU to calculate its typical current use. (c) The life expectancy of a WSAMU was estimated to be approximately 4 days under hypothetical conditions. To support smart agriculture monitoring and decision-making, a measurement index (MI) was developed based on all sensor data.