Internet of Things and LoRaWAN-Enabled Future Smart Farming

It is estimated that to keep pace with the predicted population growth over the next decades, agricultural processes involving food production will have to increase their output up to 70 percent by 2050. “Precision” or “smart” agriculture is one way to make sure that these goals for future food supply, stability, and sustainability can be met. Applications such as smart irrigation systems can utilize water more efficiently, optimizing electricity consumption and costs of labor; sensors on plants and soil can optimize the delivery of nutrients and increase yields. To make all this smart farming technology viable, it is important for it to be low-cost and farmer-friendly. Fundamental to this IoT revolution is thus the adoption of low-cost, long-range communication technologies that can easily deal with a large number of connected sensing devices without consuming excessive power. In this article, a review and analysis of currently available long-range wide area network (LoRaWAN)-enabled IoT application for smart agriculture is presented. LoRaWAN limitations and bottlenecks are discussed with particular focus on their effects on agri-tech applications. A brief description of a testbed in development is also given, alongside a review of the future research challenges that this will help to tackle.