Flying LoRA IoT Gateway for Agricultural Applications

Overview

Abstract

Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies like LoRa have become prominent for IoT deployments in large agricultural areas due to their low-power and long-range transmission. However, data transmission in large farms with diverse landscapes suffers from obstructions or occlusions, and wired gateways are still difficult to cover the whole agricultural areas without proper network or power infrastructures. This study integrates LoRa gateways with a flying drone to enhance the connectivity to sensor nodes deployed in an oil palm plantation. The LoRa gateway was mounted on a multi-rotor agricultural drone and the comparison of data transmission employing the flying gateway and fixed gateway on multiple nodes across the plantation was examined and presented. This work is important for enabling IoT monitoring in huge agriculture areas, which often lack network coverage and are difficult to access.

Biography

Samsuzana is an Associate Professor of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). She received her PhD and MSc in Agricultural Engineering from Iowa State University USA in 2008 and 2005. In 2018 she was the first runner-up for ASEAN-US Science Prize for Women in Precision Agriculture research. Her current research focuses on instrumentations and artificial intelligence for AgriFood systems. She's been occupying herself with Journal editorial work such as with the IEEE Transactions on AgriFood Electronics, Transactions of ASABE, Computer and Electronics in Agriculture and Information Processing in Agriculture.