Implementing a large LoRa network for an agricultural application

The paper presents some aspects of practical deployment of an Internet-of-Things network on a large agricultural area in South West of Romania. Data from sensors detecting soil and air parameters are gathered by local stations and must be available on the internet. Station monitoring involved designing a network in a two-tiered star topology. Starting from an imposed number and placement of the stations the selection of the gateways between the local area network and the cloud was analyzed. The poor propagation conditions lead to the adoption of transmission parameters more favorable to the signal quality than to the energy efficiency, but still maintaining the energy independence of the stations.