Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/1423211
LoRa Alliance ® and LoRaWAN ® are registered trademarks. Used with permission. ©2020 LoRa Alliance ® www.lora-alliance.org WHY LORAWAN ® IS THE LOGICAL CHOICE FOR CROP PRODUCTION MONITORING SOLUTIONS oil moistu re is only one aspect of precision agricu ltu re and this paper will detail a wide range of data inpu ts rom across the crop produ ction spectru m. hese inclu de pollination of trees in orchards, monitoring of greenhou se conditions or crops su ch as tomatoes. his approach is called precision arming and enab les highly granu lar insights to e collected, correlated, analy ed and acted pon rom pinpointed areas. his is set to ecome an enormou s market place. he precision agricu ltu re market will grow to US n 2025 2 according to randv iew Research, t less than 2% of land is cu rrently eq ipped or soil moistu re measu rement demonstrating enormou s headroom or growth. ther analyst firms also see precision farming techniques taking off, analyst firm Berg Insight, the global market for precision agricu ltu re solu tions is orecasted to grow rom 2.2 illion in 201 at a compou nd annu al growth rate AG R) of .6 to reach ab ou t .2 illion in 2021 . recision arming relies on connected sensors to regu larly commu nicate data on soil moistu re, acidity pH temperatu re and nu trient lev els, among other indicators. owev er, ecau se of the sheer nu mb er of sensors inv olv ed in enab ling accu rate data across large arms, costs hav e to e rigorou sly controlled. his paper sets ou t the challenges of enab ling precision agricu ltu re and assesses how to alance perf ormance req irements with su stainab le costs. CONNECTIVITY recision agricu ltu re is entirely reliant on connectiv ity so that the data collected cost-ef ectiv e sensors can e transmitted to a centraliz ed data processing resou rce. The nature of agriculture means that hard-wired, fixed-line connections are not possible – plows and cables don't mix well. heref ore, wireless connections are the only practical option and there is a ewildering array of these or armers to select rom. o an ex tent, this choice is conf sing with options ranging rom cellu lar networks to satellite connectiv ity in addition to low power wide area networks LP WAN) su ch as LoRaWAN ® . mportantly precision agricu ltu re doesn' t req ire large olu mes of data or the low latency commu nication that higher speed cellu lar networks can prov ide. pically sensors will commu nicate small packets of data ev ery ew hou rs with simple messages su ch as percentage moistu re lev el. or a potato armer in cotland, or ex ample, it' s cost- prohib itiv e to hav e a cellu lar connection that incorporates a SIM card with a monthly bill for each sensor in the field. he cost of the ill and the illing will ou tstrip the potential ield adv antage. t' s also important to recogniz e that crop produ ction is perf ormed ov er large geographical areas, of ten ar rom consu mer cellu lar cov erage and certainly in