Forestry Monitoring System using LoRa and Drone

Abstract

The technology of the Internet of Things(IoT) has flourished in various industries and market around the world. The agricultural environment is one of the areas to benefit from IoT technologies. LoRa is one of the most used network radios in the IoT network technology infrastructure. LoRa is often used in agricultural IoT not only for its long-range but also due to very low power usage and significant cost advantage. This paper provides a study of LoRa networks in IoT technology in an agricultural environment. The study has been conducted for between a LoRa gateway and multiple sensor nodes. Due to the radio propagation issues encountered with forestry and other types of agriculture, we used a small drone with a gateway mounted on its fuselage that collects sensor data from nodes on the ground to test the feasibility of this communications method. The scenario tested to figure out whether the gateway attached on a drone that hovers over farm field can gather data from nodes on the ground. The aim of this project is to help farmers get environmental data over the geographically large farm field, and also the locations where are difficult or dangerous for them to access. The research took in a place in a tree farm near Purdue University, Indiana.