IoT Based Smart Farming: Are the LPWAN Technologies Suitable for Remote Communication?

The Internet of Things (IoT) has changed the definition of smart farming and enhanced it’s capabilities to monitor and assess crop and soil quality; to plan planting locations to optimize resources and land area. The Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) technologies have enhanced these capabilities by increasing the wireless communication range, by eliminating the dependency of Backhaul networks and by reducing power consumption. In this paper, we have presented an experimental analysis of LPWAN literature with the support of simulation and actual implementation of a Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) based IoT network for smart farming. Based on our evaluation and experiment of the existing work and the practical implementation of IoT based smart sprinkler using LoRaWAN communication protocol, this paper has presented a comparison and evaluation of different LPWAN technologies for remote smart farming. The empirical equation of wireless communication range of LoRaWAN gateways and power consumption model of LoRaWAN end devices helped us to determine that, the LoRaWAN communication system enables an IoT network to be deployed over 10 kilometers wirelessly in remote settings without being dependent on a Long Term Evolution (LTE-4G/5G) or other backhaul network and the end devices consume as low energy as only 15.36mAh per day.