LoRa-STAR: Optimizing Energy Consumption in LoRa Nodes for Precision Farming

LoRa (Long-Range) has become an integral part of IoT applications in the last decade and is a commonly used protocol inside the LPWAN (Low-Power Wide-Area Network) family. Sensor-farming, smart in-home appliances, and wearable technology are just a few examples of industries that have fully adopted the modern data collection method often used in IoT applications. However, one of the major problems with LoRa is the power consummation and traffic congestion as the nodes in the network increases. Especially for precision farming where the current information infrastructure is mainly designed for centralized systems and does not meet requirements for smart sensing. In this work, we propose a method of optimizing the power consumption of a LoRa denoted as “LoRaWAN-based Sensing Technology for precision fARming” (LoRa-STAR). Our aim is to provide a method for reducing power consumption on any LoRa node in highly customizable architecture. The proposed method is presented and validated by simulation-based results, as well as experimental results with the hardware node for the optimal way to reduce the average current draw on a LoRa network with more than 300 nodes. We validated the implication of real-world challenges and proposes a number of solutions for reducing power consumption and increase the number of communication channel.