When OneWireless Technology is Not Enough: A Network Architecture for Precision Agriculture Using LoRa, Wi-Fi, and LTE

Abstract

The world population will reach nearly 10 billion people by 2050, according to the United Nations. Therefore, more food to supply the world’s demand will be required in the following years. Precision agriculture emerges as an option to satisfy the growing demand. In smart farming, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are crucial in the deployment of sensors in crop fields. Precision agriculture includes crop monitoring and fertigation control. Monitoring and control have distinct network requirements. While monitoring stations deployment requires long-range networks, control stations have other requirements like low latency. For that reason, the use of a combination of WSN is necessary. In this paper, we present an option of network architecture for precision agriculture projects. The architecture includes the use of LoRa for monitoring stations and Wi-Fi/LTE for control stations. Currently, we are working on smart fertigation in greenhouses. For the architecture, we consider the typical requirements for smart farming projects, but also our project’s requirements.