Real Time Experimental Calibration of Ultrasonic Sensor and LoRa Communication module in LoRaWAN Architecture

Internet of Things (IoT) is the promising technology that is predominantly used in most of the automation applications in recent years. When employing IoT in remote monitoring applications, the devices used are mostly battery-operated; hence, to prolong the lifetime of the application, the technology that uses less energy while offering an extensive range becomes vital. The technologies currently used in building IoT applications are Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Zig-Bee, which fail to meet the above essential requirements. LoRa (Long Range) is the alternate technology that addresses the above requirement. The objective of this work is to provide insight into LoRa, detailing its merits and demerits. Further, from the comprehensive literature survey, it is found that ultrasonic sensors are predominantly used in IoT-based applications that involve detection of level and proximity, as well as determining the status of available parking spaces in a parking lot. Hence, this research also details the procedure involved in this sensor calibration and its usage in LoRa based IoT architecture in real time. The performance of the sensor and communication module is validated in terms of accuracy and range on the LoRaWAN test bed in real time.