Global population is expected to grow by 70% by 2050, putting ever-increasing pressure on agriculture to feed the world. At the same time land and water shortages, changing consumer patterns and a global trend toward preserving natural environmental resources such as soil quality add to the burden on farmers to balance the various demands. So far, farmers have had to monitor manually the condition of their livestock, environment or agricultural produce, even on large farms. Their property also requires safety controls and security protection against natural disasters, theft, and accidents.
Until now, the implementation of automated monitoring and control systems has been limited by the poor coverage of cellular networks in many highly productive but sparsely populated rural areas. Thanks to LPWA technologies like LoRaWAN™, IIoT now enables detection, monitoring and control over very long distance (over 15 km) of a wide variety of key agricultural data: soil temperature and moisture; weather, rainfall and water quality; airborne pollution; crop growth; livestock position, condition and feed levels; smart connected harvesters and irrigation equipment; fire, theft and flood detection… LoRaWAN™ technology’s long-range, low-power wireless qualities enable the use of low-cost sensors to send data from the farm to the Cloud where it can be analyzed to improve operations. Actility enables agricultural companies to deliver various services using a common IoT enabler platform, providing LoRaWAN™ network server and software to manage public or private networks, under a unified, scalable, multipurpose IoT network infrastructure.
The advent of affordable IoT can alter the irreversible consequences of poor irrigation management by providing farmers with real-time soil moisture monitoring and tools for remote irrigation management. The sensors-based system provides the ability to detect water levels at various depths and automate irrigation valve controls. LoRaWAN™ -based solutions provides producers with actionable data, therefore enabling more efficient water management, optimized plant growth, increased crop yields, and up to a 50% savings in irrigation water usage.
Until now, growers did not have an effective way to measure soil conditions other than to visually inspect the crops. Today, IoT connects your fields and gives them the voice to tell you everything they need to thrive. Soil monitoring sensors deliver real-time readings of soil temperature, volumetric water content, air temperature, but also nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium (NPK) levels – directly from the field to the Internet. Smart sensors deliver data at customizable intervals, eliminating the need for manual readings. You can accurately predict optimal planting and fertilization times, reduce water usage, and minimize the plant stress that comes from over or under-watering.
IoT enables easy and cost-effective solutions for weather conditions monitoring, flood detection, and water quality control, providing you the data to make accurate decisions about your fields and crops. Remotely access real-time information about the water level in rivers and canals, the rainfall, temperature changes, wind conditions, air pressure, and humidity for your precise location. Optimize labor, water usage and crop health with the smart solution to precision agriculture. By implementing a network of LoRaWAN™ sensors and gateways across your fields, environmental indicators can be measured in real-time, detecting issues before they become crises.
IoT solutions built on LoRaWAN™ represent an important trend in ranching. The data from sensors give ranchers the capability to monitor their livestock much more closely and act faster in the event of an abnormality – either in a cow’s health or its location. Using Actility IoT connectivity platform, ranchers are now able to use LPWA networks and smart sensors to remotely monitor the health, behavior, and location of livestock, be alert to early signs of illness in animals and to track the location of livestock to better manage pasture utilization.
Agricultural facilities have various assets that need surveillance. Wide area coverage and low power communication provided by LPWA networks like LoRaWAN™ enable new efficient solutions for tank and storage level monitoring. Farm gates, buildings and equipment can be protected with IoT sensors and trackers. Even beehives are getting remote health monitoring and anti-theft protection. Moreover, IoT allows improved food quality monitoring and traceability by remotely monitoring the location and conditions of shipments and products.
LoRaWAN™ has the lowest cost for network infrastructure deployment and maintenance thanks to its high link budget, long range, good redundancy and ease for scaling densification.
Cities have the choice to either deploy their own city-scale LoRaWAN networks or leverage existing public ones. The network serves existing business units and can be built on existing city infrastructure.
Very low-power bi-directional communications, deep indoor penetration and can work in a remote, harsh environment, high reliability of the network infrastructure and the sensors
LoRaWAN industrial sensors are optimized for a battery life of up to 15 years, and for transmission frequency, LoRaWAN offers one of the best options for mitigating battery life issues through network densification.
The LoRaWAN specification uses 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithms to provide end-to-end encryption using two keys: one for the users, for protection of payload content; another for operators, for network authentication security.
Cities have the flexibility to integrate devices from multiple vendors and benefit from interoperability at the network level.
If you are looking to implement custom Smart Agriculture IoT solutions using Actility’s IoT connectivity platform, you can reach out to us through our contact form
Humidity, soil moisture, and weather data can be analyzed continuously to automatically control irrigation where and when needed without human intervention. GPS tracking of livestock on huge farms, such as Australian cattle stations which can sprawl over up to 24,000 sq km of the outback, allows the farmers and station staff to use their time for more value-added tasks. Another key use case is to leverage precise information to plant crops, limit fertilizer usage and maximize yield. All these optimizations can result in more environmentally friendly and sustainable agricultural practices. Actility allows you to connect and track virtually everything on a farm, from cattle to beehives! Using advanced analytics and big data tools, combined with third-party information – such as weather services – farmers can now know when is the best time to plant or harvest crops.
ThingPark-connected objects provide 24/7 visibility at a very granular level of soil and crop health, machinery in use, storage conditions, animal behavior, and energy consumption. All collected data is available in a single platform and can be connected to a third party application, allowing farmers to get a complete overview of what is happening on their land without having to inspect in person. Leveraging advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities, automated systems can take preventative action to forestall developing issues: whether it is the irrigation system anticipating the need to water crops, or preventive maintenance of agricultural machinery before a fault occurs, thus avoiding expensive downtime or lack of critical resource, and consequent loss of money.
Farmers can leverage both public and private LoRaWAN networks for their Smart Agriculture use cases, and both types are managed on Actility’s ThingPark platform. A private LPWA network is cost-effective and easy to deploy thanks to long-range communication which allows extensive coverage of indoor and outdoor with relatively few gateways and allows having complete control of the network and data. For example, only 1 or 2 base stations are needed to provide complete coverage for a big farm.
LoRa-enabled sensors detect and measure physical characteristics or conditions of a device (on/off states, amperage draw, temperature, pressure, vibration levels) and perform other functions, like using geolocation technologies or converting analog readings into a digital format. Moreover, you save the installation of cables with battery-powered LoRa sensors.
The market leading, most complete, powerful and flexible multi-technology LPWA IoT Network platform. ThingPark Wireless is the preferred IoT network platform for Service Providers rolling out LPWA connectivity services, already powering over half of national LoRaWAN™ network deployments worldwide .
ThingPark Wireless is the heart of your IoT network, enabling secure connectivity, data flow, and management from sensors to cloud applications. ThingPark Wireless is modular, and scales easily, enabling Service Providers to monetize connectivity and accelerate the adoption of IoT solutions across multiple industries.
