Forestry Monitoring System using LoRa and Drone
Sunnyeo Park Shinhye Yun
KAIST Jeju National University
Daejeon, South Korea Jeju, South Korea
psnyeo88@gmail.com tlsepfpffk4349@gmail.com
Ryunhwan Kwon John Ganser
Kyung-hee University Purdue University
Seoul, South Korea West Lafayette, Indiana, USA
krh322@gmail.com ganser@purdue.edu
ABSTRACT
The technology of the Internet of Things(IoT) has flourished in
various industries and market around the world. The agricultural
environment is one of the areas to benefit from IoT technologies.
LoRa is one of the most used network radios in the IoT network
technology infrastructure. LoRa is often used in agricultural IoT
not only for its long-range but also due to very low power usage
and significant cost advantage. This paper provides a study of LoRa
networks in IoT technology in an agricultural environment. The
study has been conducted for between a LoRa gateway and multiple
sensor nodes. Due to the radio propagation issues encountered with
forestry and other types of agriculture, we used a small drone with
a gateway mounted on its fuselage that collects sensor data from
nodes on the ground to test the feasibility of this communications
method. The scenario tested to figure out whether the gateway
attached on a drone that hovers over farm field can gather data
from nodes on the ground. The aim of this project is to help farmers
get environmental data over the geographically large farm field,
and also the locations where are difficult or dangerous for them
to access. The research took in a place in a tree farm near Purdue
University, Indiana.
CCS CONCEPTS
• Applied computing → Agriculture; • Computer systems or-
ganization → Sensor networks; • Hardware → Sensor applica-
tions and deployments;
KEYWORDS
IoT, Agriculture, LPWAN, LoRaWAN, LoRa, Drone
ACM Reference Format:
Sunnyeo Park, Shinhye Yun, Hyunjin Kim, Ryunhwan Kwon, John Ganser,
and Smith Anthony. 2018. Forestry Monitoring System using LoRa and
Drone. In WIMS ’18: 8th International Conference on Web Intelligence, Mining
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or
classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed
for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation
on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the
author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission
and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org.
WIMS ’18, June 25–27, 2018, Novi Sad, Serbia
© 2018 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5489-9/18/06. . . $15.00
https://doi.org/10.1145/3227609.3227677
Hyunjin Kim
Sejong University
Seoul, South Korea
hynjin0110@gmail.com
Smith Anthony
Purdue University
West Lafayette, Indiana, USA
ahsmith@purdue.edu
and Semantics, June 25–27, 2018, Novi Sad, Serbia. ACM, New York, NY, USA,
8 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3227609.3227677
1 INTRODUCTION
The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the communication among
objects using the Internet. With IoT, communication can occur be-
tween not only people and machines but machines and machines.
Considering the functionality and identity as essential it is rea-
sonable to define the IoT as "Things having identities and virtual
personalities operating in smart spaces using intelligent interfaces
to connect and communicate within social, environmental and user
contexts." [1].
IoT technology recently has gotten attention in various industrial
fields and it has been gradually introduced to numerous markets
[11]. We also find IoT technology in agriculture. Traditional farming
systems are now transforming into the smart farming system by
using sensing and networking technology and connecting to the
Internet. This is also called Agricultural IoT.
The agricultural sector is going to face enormous challenges in
order to feed the 9.6 billion people that the Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) predicts are going to inhabit the planet by
2050: food production must increase by 70% [2], and this has to
be achieved in spite of the limited availability of arable lands, the
increasing need for fresh water (agriculture consumes 70 per cent
of the world’s fresh water supply) and other less predictable factors,
such as the impact of climate change, which, according a recent
report by the United Nations could lead [3], among other things, to
changes to seasonal events in the life cycle of plant and animals.
One way to address these issues and increase the quality and
quantity of agricultural production is using sensing technology to
make farms more "intelligent" and more connected through the
so-called "precision agriculture" also known as ’smart farming’ [4].
According to Bannerman [5], 62% of companies in the sector
have already fully or partially deployed IoT-based solutions in their
agriculture business with a further 27% to do the same over the
next six months. Additionally, according to Juniper Research [6],
over 13.4 billion devices were connected to the internet as part of
IoT in 2015 and there is an expected increase by 185% to 38.5 billion
devices by the year 2020. This shows a growing market for the
Agricultural IoT.
A vast and varied range of smart farming methods and tools
are in development and already in operation across the globe. we
can monitor and control agricultural production and feed by using
WIMS ’18, June 25–27, 2018, Novi Sad, Serbia
Figure 1: System Architecture
advanced sensor systems [12][13][14]. Also, drones and unmanned
aerial vehicles are among one of the most promising and widely
used. Farming drones are changing the ways farmers plant crops
[15][16][19]. There are the additions of 3-D mapping technology
on board, drones collect information on critical factors, including
field geography and soil composition early in the planting process
which helps farmers optimize field configuration and seed-planting
patterns. It can also share information on when to seed, water, and
harvest crops.
In this paper, we considered a system monitoring environmental
data on a farm and collecting this data by using LoRaWAN and a
drone. This system consists of sensor-nodes and a single gateway.
The sensor-nodes are located at each area in a farm collecting
environmental data. Each node uses temperature and humidity
sensors, a light sensor, A real-time clock (RTC) module, and a micro
SD module. The data is sent to a gateway that is attached to a drone
and then transmitted to a database server.
The LoRa wireless network technology used in our system has
wide area coverage. On the LoRa network, one gateway can connect
to multiple end-nodes. In addition, LoRa has more than a decade of
battery life, making it ideal for long-term sensor implementation
such as in a forestry environment.
But, in the farm area, it can have the radio propagation issues
encountered with forestry and other types of agriculture. So we
used the drone, which mounts gateway that collects data from
nodes spread over the wide farm area. A drone is a useful tool, for
the reason that it can fly over obstacles like trees in the tree farm
which is our simulation place.
To demonstrate that the gateway attached on a drone can gather
data from nodes on the ground, we first tested out the programmed
system at the 6th-floored parking garage on Purdue campus in
West Lafayette, Indiana. The next experiment has been carried out
on a tree farm in New Richmond, Indiana. The two simulations
Sunnyeo Park et al.
were conducted mainly to test LoRa multi-node connection and the
coverage of LoRaWAN.
In other words, we show that this paper is to help farmers get
environmental data over the geographically large farm field, and
also the locations where are difficult or dangerous for them to
access.
The overall concept of LoRa technology used in our system is
described in section 2. Next, the system that we conducted is intro-
duced in section 3. Lastly, in section 4, the detailed implementation
of our network system is explained.
2 LORA
IoT applications in agriculture have a need to consider its charac-
teristics, such as vast field, outdoor area, less energy and power
consistency. Remote sensors and wireless network devices often
transport small data packets and require connecting in the wide
area using a convenient power supply.
Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) is a type of wireless
telecommunication wide area network designed to allow long-range
communications at a low bit rate among things (connected objects),
such as sensors operated on a battery [7]. LPWAN ranges from a
few kilometers in dense urban areas and up to 15-30 kilometers
in rural locations. The estimated power life can exceed 10 years.
Radio Chipset cost is 2orlessandradiosubscriptioncostcanbe1 per
devices per year [8]. With these features, LPWAN is one of the
most prominent technologies used in IoT solutions while Bluetooth,
Zigbee, and Wi-Fi are more adequate for consumer level IoT. Even
LPWAN is a single technology, there are kinds of LPWAN with
many shapes and forms depending on its different set options.
Sigfox, Random phase multiple access (RPMA), NB-IoT, and LoRa
etc.
LoRa is a kind of LPWAN. It works better in the outdoor and
open area. It provides long-range communication up to about 10 to
Forestry Monitoring System using LoRa and Drone WIMS ’18, June 25–27, 2018, Novi Sad, Serbia

40 kilometers in rural area. LoRa communication in urban zones the gateway using LoRaWAN and drones to monitor the status of
can be distracted by lots of obstacles and its network range would crops and farms. In addition, we aim to verify the structure and
be few kilometers like about 1 kilometers to 5 kilometers [17]. limitations of this system through experiments that verifies one-to-
Our study using LoRa would be conducted on a tree farm filed so many communication between various sensor nodes and gateway
understanding how LoRa communication can be affected by forestry and coverage of LoRaWAN. In short, our goal is to help farmers
environment is important. That is achieved through an experiment get environmental data over the geographically large farm field,
implemented in the non-urban area, that had worked on parameter and also the locations where are difficult or dangerous for them to
exploration to understand how vegetational environment affects access.
LoRa communication range. The result of LoRa communication
in the forests showed consistent connection patterns even in the
different environmental area [18].
We designed a network for this system which was aimed to
support the drones and the sensors on the field. The network was
based on LoRa and the LoRaWAN protocol. LoRa is a proprietary,
chirp spread spectrum (CSS) radio modulation technology for LP-
WAN used by LoRaWAN, Haystack Technologies, and Symphony
Link. LoRaWAN, on the other hand, is a media access control layer
protocol for managing communication between LPWAN gateways
and end-node devices, maintained by the LoRa Alliance [7]. One of
the biggest limitations of using LoRaWAN is that it only supports
data rates between 0.3kbps and 50kbps. It might seem very little,
but it is sufficient to communicate all the data that sensors generate.
The primary reason we decided to use LoRa/LoRaWAN is the long
range and it also supports bi-directional communication, which
enables the sensors and analytics team to act on the information
they get. (a) Sensor node

3 SYSTEM DESIGN
The agricultural market is one of the most suitable fields to combine
the Internet of Things technology. In this paper, IoT echo system
for monitoring crops and farm conditions is implemented and ap-
plied to the agricultural environment. Figure 1 shows the overall
architecture of this system.
As shown in figure 1, the architecture was come up with as a
way to conceptually determine how the system would work and
interact with the drone and distributed sensors. Several sensors are
used to collect farm condition and LoRaWAN and drone are used
to send this information.
It is required to consider various systemic and physical condi-
tions of the agriculture like wide outdoor area, and power life. The
node with several sensors and wireless network module should (b) Gateway
transmit and receive data over a long distance with low power
consumption. So, we selected LPWAN technology among various Figure 2: System components
wireless network technologies and decided to use LoRa wireless
network technology, which has recently been attracting attention
from various LPWAN technologies. LoRa communication is per- 3.2 Sensor node
formed between the LoRa gateway and several sensors. The drones
The sensor node is gathering accurate and precise data from the
with LoRa gateways fly over the trees and collect data from sensors
farm. Determining what data to measure required an understanding
located on the bottom of the farm. This allows users to access very
of the system at hand and who the end consumers of the data would
remotely and hard to reach locations. Also, it allows a large area to
be. For proof of concept, some of the core elements associated with
be covered by a single gateway.
plant growth were chosen to be monitored. Such things as sunlight,
soil moisture content, and average temperatures and humidity were
3.1 Goals and Objectives selected. Once the desired measuring parameters were selected, the
The purpose of this paper is to implement a system that periodi- correct sensors could be selected to gather the data.
cally stores data by using several sensors such as temperature and For the prototype, we configured the node as shown in figure 2a.
humidity sensors, a light sensor, and transmits this information to The main board of the sensor node used in this system is Arduino
WIMS ’18, June 25–27, 2018, Novi Sad, Serbia
UNO and connected LoRa Shield v1.4 of Dragino for LoRaWAN
communication. To obtain the status information of the farm, a
temperature and humidity sensor and a light sensor were used.
Later, you can connect additional sensors to get more information.
Also, the time that the sensor information is collected is also stored
in the micro SD card by connecting the RTC (Real Time Clock)
module. The firmware to be uploaded to the Arduino UNO of the
sensor node was developed using the Arduino IDE provided by
Arduino official site [9].
3.3 Gateway
The gateway acts as the server to the network, allowing data to be
streamed to and from a network of sensors and then also passed
along to either an onboard storage device or sent along to a cloud
server via a parallel network interface. The individual sensor nodes
act as the clients to the network.
The specific radio system chosen for the communication system
between sensor nodes and the gateway was the LoRa radio technol-
ogy. A low cost, low energy consumption device, that was ideal for
IoT applications. Dragino, a manufacturer of IoT systems, created a
LoRa gateway device called the LG01 that was used for this system,
as shown in figure 2b.
Figure 3: Dragino LG01 System Architecture[10]
The gateway has a structure as shown in figure 3 [10]. There is a
CPU installed with Linux that provides a Wi-Fi function and a Web
interface, and an MCU connected to a LoRa chip to perform LoRa
communication. Linux can be accessed by SSH to handle gateways
at a low level, such as debugging gateways or accessing the file
system. And MCU, ATMega328P is compatible with the Arduino
IDE, so it is possible to develop and monitor gateways using the
Arduino IDE.
The drone as shown in figure 2b is the 3DR IRIS+ model. We
used the QGroundControl program for the autonomous flight of
the drone. Using this program, we can set the path of the drones,
flight height, flight time, etc., and upload them to the drones.
4 SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION
The progress shows how the system works and can be explained
in a few steps. First, the sensor node collects continuous data from
the tree farm. Next, this data is stored temporarily on an embedded
SD card. Third, the data is transmitted to a periodically roaming
and data collecting drone. The drone contains a LoRa gateway
Sunnyeo Park et al.
that is acting as a server to the sensor node client. Once the cor-
rect handshake is made between LoRa server and client, the data
is transmitted from the sensor node to the gateway. Finally, the
gateway stores the data on an inserted flash drive for storage and
eventual collection by the user.
Figure 4: Network Diagram
4.1 Network Diagram
The networking process between the sensor node and the gateway
is shown in figure 4.
LoRa communication between sensor nodes and gateway is con-
ducted under client/server connection. Sensor nodes are clients that
communicate with the server which is a gateway. the diagram above
marks the communication process between clients and a server.
Gateway, which is the server, consistently sends out broadcast sig-
nals. When the client gets this signal, it transmits its ID and asks for
a connection to the server. The successful connection comes with
a response transmitted from the gateway to the end-node. After
connection, the server put connected clients in its LoRa network.
If there is a sensor node registered in the network, the gateway
sends a message requesting data to the nodes in turn. The sensor
node that receives the request reads the data of the line requested
by the gateway from the file and transmits it. This is repeated until
the sensor node sends the last data message. When the gateway
receiving the last data sends an ACK message, communication with
one node is terminated.
4.2 Functions and Flowchart of sensor node
A sensor node, working as a client, has following functions.
Forestry Monitoring System using LoRa and Drone WIMS ’18, June 25–27, 2018, Novi Sad, Serbia

Figure 5: Flow chart of sensor node

• Each sensor data has collected every predetermined time

and stored in a file together with the time.
• It usually waits for the gateway’s broadcast message.
• After receiving the broadcast message of the gateway, it
sends a message requesting to join and tries to connect with
the gateway.
• When a successful connection is made with the gateway, it
is waiting for a message requesting data from server.
• When the data request message is received, the message
of the segment is read from the file and transmitted to the
gateway.
This process is described in a flowchart on figure 5.

4.3 Functions and Flowchart of gateway

The gateway acts as a server and has following functions.
• Server transmits a broadcast message periodically.
• Upon receipt of the Join request message from the sensor
node, it responds and registers the sensor node in the net-
work.
• After sending the data request message to the registered
sensor nodes and receiving the data, it repeats the operation
of storing the data in a file for each node.
This process is described in a flowchart on figure 6.
5 SYSTEM EXPERIMENT
We conducted two simulations on different environmental locations.
The first system has been implemented at the 6th-floored parking
garage on campus area at Purdue University and then in a Tree
Farm in New Richmond, Indiana. We have tested the coverage of
the LoRaWAN through trials in the parking building, implemented
Figure 6: Flow chart of gateway
the system through the simulation in the Tree Farm, and checked
the coverage of LoRaWAN on the farm.
5.1 Parking building
Four sensor nodes were installed at the entrance of the parking
building. The gateway was moved vertically and horizontally fur-
ther away from where the end nodes were. In order to monitor
communication condition among the nodes and the gateway in real
time, laptops have been connected to the sensor nodes.
Experiments were conducted to verify the vertical coverage in
a 6-story building on campus to see if it could communicate with
gateway attached to the drone flying above the trees in the farm
and sensor nodes located on the ground. As shown in figure 7,
WIMS ’18, June 25–27, 2018, Novi Sad, Serbia Sunnyeo Park et al.

Figure 7: Horizontal and Vertical movement of LoRa Gate-

way

Grant Street Parking Garage that has been tested has a height of
about 15m with six floors. For the test, we installed a sensor node at
the parking building entrance as shown in figure 8 and moved the
gateway vertically and horizontally further away from the entrance.

Figure 9: LoRa Gateway Movement on the building

determine how many nodes should be placed for efficient commu-

nication without slowing down. It is also needed to estimate the
path of the drones and to measure the time that the drone stays in
the sky.

5.2 Tree Farm

Figure 8: LoRa Gateway Vertical Movement

First, an experiment was conducted to get the horizontal cov-

erage of this LoRa network communication between the gateway
and the nodes as moving gateway to different distances from the
parking building.
As a result of the first experiment shown in figure 8, LoRa com-
munication was possible up to about 500m when the gateway was
moved horizontally from the end node, but it was confirmed that the
communication speed was getting slower as the distance became
further. Also, when the gateway was moved to a height of about
15m, which is the top of the parking building, server communicated
with each client without difficulty. Communication was possible
even when the gateway is moved about 60m horizontally still at
Figure 10: Tree Farm
the same height as shown in figure 9.
This experiment proved that LoRa communication could be con-
tinued at a height of about 15m, which is the height of the parking The system ultimately has been tested in Tree Farm as shown
building on the 6th floor. Based on this, even when the drone flies in figure 10. We worked this experiment to verify whether the
over the trees in Tree Farm, LoRa communication between the system we implemented at last simulation was working properly
server and multiple clients would be possible. Now we can con- on multiple nodes, and how far distant LoRaWAN communication
sider the horizontal coverage for next experiment in Tree Farm to can happen in the farming environment.
Forestry Monitoring System using LoRa and Drone WIMS ’18, June 25–27, 2018, Novi Sad, Serbia

Sensor nodes were installed throughout the Tree Farm, and each
node was monitored on a laptop for the communicational condition.
The drone was set to carry gateway on its body and to fly on the
specified path for communicating with the nodes beneath of the
trees on the farm. We monitored the USB device by connecting to
SSH on the gateway to verify that the gateway receives data.
The gateway has been attached to the bottom of the drone with
its battery as shown in figure 11. It communicates with the sensor
nodes on the ground through LoRa communication by flying on
the designated path.

(a) node 1

Figure 11: Gateway attached on the bottom of Drone

By using a program called ’QGroundControl’, we have specified

the path of the drones that the gateway can communicate with the
nodes which were put on the ground. This program allows you to
set the start and end points of the drone. With this program, you
can change its height and time that it stays at each position.
As a result, we could see that the nodes on the farm were success-
fully communicating with the gateway in the drone flying about
(b) node 2
20 meters high. When the drone traveled, each node around the
drone made a connection with the gateway and sent the requested
the data by the gateway. On the serial monitor of each node, we Figure 12: Serial monitor for sensor nodes that are transfer-
could see the log that transfers data as shown in figure 12a, figure ring data
12b. The file corresponding to the name ’[ID] _ [date]’ assigned to
each node was created in the USB device connected to the gateway.
Each file stored transmitted data as shown in figure 13. we were able to know which parts to consider in order to apply
However, the Dragino LoRa gateway did not work well in low each technology used in this experiment.
outside temperature, so there was difficulty in performing the exper-
iment in the early winter weather. Also, it was not clearly tested to
confirm how many of nodes the gateway can communicate because 6 CONCLUSION
we could not prepare more of sensor nodes. The drone consumed We implemented a system that periodically stores data by using sev-
more power since it weighed more carrying the gateways and extra eral sensors such as temperature and humidity sensor, light sensor,
batteries. Since the battery consumption of drone was faster, the and transmits this information to the gateway using LoRaWAN and
number of tests was limited.mited. It was not easy to see the maxi- drone to monitor the status of crops and farm fields. We conducted
mum coverage of LoRaWAN on this simulation due to explained two experiments for verifying the structure and limitations of this
problems. system. The tests showed how the setup of LoRa communication
But with this experiment, it was possible to actually apply the of one-to-many nodes works as well as the coverage of LoRaWAN.
system using LoRa technology and drone in the agricultural envi- If the battery problem of Drone and the state of the gateway
ronment. We could see the benefits of using this system. In addition, that is sensitive to temperature and humidity are compensated, it
WIMS ’18, June 25–27, 2018, Novi Sad, Serbia Sunnyeo Park et al.

[16] Vasisht, D.; Kapetanovic, Z.; Won, J.; Jin, X.; Chandra, R.; Sinha, S.N.; Kapoor,
A.; Sudarshan, M.; Stratman, S. FarmBeats: An IoT platform for data-driven
agriculture. In Proceedings of the 14th USENIX Symposium on Networked Sys-
tems Design and Implementation, Boston, MA, USA, 27âĂŞ29 March 2017; pp.
515âĂŞ529.
[17] Centenaro M., Vangelista L., Zanella A., Zorzi M, Long-range communications
in unlicensed bands: The rising stars in the IoT and smart city scenarios IEEE J.
Wirel. Comm., 23 (5) (2016), pp. 60-67
[18] Oana Iova, Amy Murphy, Gian Pietro Picco, Lorenzo Ghiro, Davide Molteni, et
al., LoRa from the City to the Mountains: Exploration of Hardware and Environ-
mental Factors, Proceedings of the 2017 International Conference on Embedded
Wireless Systems and Networks, Feb 2017, Uppsala, Sweden.ãĂĹhal-01647149ãĂĽ
[19] Veroustraete, Frank, 2015. The Rise of the Drones in Agriculture, Agriculture
Editorial, Ecronicon September 16, 2015.

Figure 13: The USB of the gateway that saved the data

is expected that our system using LoRa and drone can be applied
to actual agriculture as well as the tree farm.

REFERENCES
[1] INFSO D.4 Networked Enterprise & RFID INFSO G.2. Micro & Nano systems, in:
co-operation with theworking group RFID of the ETP EPOSS. Internet of. Things
in 2020, roadmap for the future, version 1.1, 27. May 2008
[2] FAO, 2050: A third more mouths to feed http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/
35571/icode/
[3] [3] IPCC, Climate Change 2014, Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability https:
//www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg2/ar5_wgII_spm_en.pdf
[4] forbes, The Future Of Agriculture? Smart Farming https://www.forbes.com/
sites/federicoguerrini/2015/02/18/the-future-of-agriculture-smart-farming/
#1ef071603c42
[5] Bannerman, Natalie. (2017). ’IoT set to fuel agriculture’, says Inmarsat. Global
Telecoms Business, 1-2.
[6] Juniper Research (2015). Internet of Things’ Connected Devices to Almost Triple
to Over 38 Billion Units by 2020. Retrieved February 03, 2016 from http://www.
juniperresearch.com
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LPWAN
[8] https://www.postscapes.com/long-range-wireless-iot-protocol-lora/
[9] https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software
[10] http://www.dragino.com/products/lora/item/119-lg01-s.html
[11] O. Vermesan, P. Friess, Internet of Things: Converging Technologies for Smart
Environments and Integrated Ecosystems, River Publishers (2013)
[12] J. Ma, X. Zhou, S. Li, Z. Lio, Connecting agriculture to the internet of
things through sensor networks, in: Proceedings of Internet of Things
(iThings/CPSCom), 2011, pp. 184âĂŞ187.
[13] S. Li, S. Peng, W. Chen, X. Lu, Income: practical land monitoring in precision
agriculture with sensor networks. Comp. Commun., 36 (4) (2013), pp. 459-467
[14] X. Wang, N. Liu, The Application of Internet of Things in Agricultural means
of production supply chain management, Research Article, Journal of Chemical
and Pharmaceutical Research, 2014, 6(7):2304-2310.
[15] P. Tripicchio, M. Satler, G. Dabisias, E. Ruffaldi, and C. Avizzano, Towards smart
farming and sustainable agriculture with drones, in Intelligent Environments
(IE), 2015 International Conference on, July 2015, pp. 140âĂŞ143.