Wireless Technologies for Agricultural Monitoring using Internet of Things Devices with Energy Harvesting Capabilities

Technological advances in the Internet of Things (IoT) have lead the way for technology to be used in ways that were never possible before. Through the development of devices with low-power radios, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) can be configured for almost any type of application. Agricultural has been one example where IoT and WSN have been able to increase productivity, efficiency, and output yield. Systems that previously required manual operation can be easily replaced with sensors and actuators to automate the process such as irrigation and disease management. Powering these devices is a concern as batteries are often required due to devices being located where electricity is not readily available. In this paper, a comparison is performed between three wireless technologies: IEEE 802.15.4 (Zigbee), Long Range Wireless Area Network (LoRaWAN), and IEEE 802.11g (WiFi 2.4~GHz) for agricultural monitoring with energy harvesting capabilities. According to experimental results, LoRaWAN is the optimal technology to use in an agricultural monitoring system where power consumption and network lifetime are a priority. The experimental results can be used for the selection of wireless technology for agricultural monitoring following application requirements.