2018 International Conference on Intelligent and Advanced System (ICIAS)

LoRaWAN in Climate Monitoring in

Advance Precision Agriculture System
Nik Hisham Nik Ibrahim, Ahmad Rizan Ibrahim, Ibrahim Mat, Ahmad Nizar Harun
MIMOS Berhad
Kuala Lumpur, MALAYSIA
{nik.hisham, rizan, ibm, nizar.harun}@mimos.my
Gunawan Witjaksono
Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS,
Tronoh, MALAYSIA
gunawan.witjaksono@utp.edu.my

Abstract- Consumption of mushrooms has been on
rise over the past several years in the world. Costly
and great market mushroom are insufficient in
market. In that capacity, generation of such item
should be quickened. Generation of mushroom is
critical to take care of this appeal item. Generation
of mushroom development is imperative because of
its healthful esteem, restorative esteem, and business
creation. Right now the mushroom development is
simply being done in an exceptionally crude
manner. As such it is vital to overhaul the overall
processes to get better yields with optimum
resources. One of the strategy is by controlling the
atmosphere to speed up and quicken the
development in mushroom growth. Smart
Mushroom House (SMH) for shiitake growing is one
of the solution to increase this expensive products.
The framework created is to deal with the
communication between devices such as between
sensors and gateway. The framework uses Internet
of Things innovation that comprises of sensor
innovation with feedback framework to control the
ambient in the mushroom house. Proper control of
the ambient will produce better yields. LORAWAN
plays role in the communication between sensor
nodes and the gateway.
Keywords – Internet of Things, sensors for
agriculture, mushroom house,
LORAWAN.
I. BACKGROUND
World mushroom market value of 2020 is
expected to exceed USD50billion. [1]. Lentinus
edodes (Berkeley) Singer is best known by its
Japanese name (shiitake) and Chinese name
(xiangu) [2]. In general, the use of Shiitake fungus
is a food ingredient. By the existence and the
flavours that he possessed have placed Shiitake's
current position as the 3rd largest mushroom is
produced worldwide after champignon (Agaricus)
and Tiram (Pleurotus). Among the mushroom
producing countries in the world, China and Japan
are the largest producers of Shiitake fungi.
Among the mushroom consuming nations, Japan
is including the large Shiitake consuming. Due to
the high level of fungus consumption of the
community Japan, it is no surprise that Japan is
the largest mushroom importer country from
China. In 2004 Japan imported mushrooms from
China at 87,722,085 kg including Shiitake with
USD263,106,855. The Japanese people are
consuming fungus mainly Shiitake is due the
existence of the nutritional value and potential for
the health of the fungus of Shiitake.
Nutraceutical is one of the fastest growing
business aspects right now. The annual market
value of nutraceutical (supplements, minerals,
vitamins) including medicinal mushrooms is
estimated at more than USD45billion with growth
above 10%. For the cure sector of cardiovascular
disease value. The myocardial drug market
reportedly reached USD8billion including a drop-
down category cholesterol (USD6billion),
antithrombolytics (USD1.4billion) and
anticoagulants (USD700million). While the drug
for high blood pressure reportedly reached USD
22billion in the global market [3].
Shiitake has long been known to be potential as
a preventive and healing agent Cardio-vascular
disease are mainly cholesterol. With a market
opportunity overview nutraceutical for the healing
of this cardiovascular disease, it can be said that
the Shiitake fungus has a huge market potential as
agent base nutraceuticals for the disease. Cancer
cases increasingly growing, even in some
countries have reached the frequency number 1
out of 4 people are cancer patients. Symptoms of

978-1-5386-7269-3/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

this time where the disease is infectious by viruses
such as AIDS, SARS, and Bird Flu is an
additional niche Shiitake can be developed as a
nutraceutical agent. Many studies have proven
potential Shiitake can play a role in the above
cases. From the various studies it can be
summarized that Shiitake has a prominent
potential for 3 aspects of the disease namely
degenerative (anti-cholesterol), anti-cancer and
anti-microbial especially anti-virus [3], [9], [10].
Mushroom cultivation requires the
manufacturing of compost and the control of
growing environment. Control of growing
environment is one of the critical part in order to
produce good quality mushroom. Present systems
have many problems associated with control of
growing environment. This problem and
procedure will be addressed in this project.
The following parts of the paper will describe
about the system platform and overall design of
Smart Mushroom House. Finally the paper will
present the data captured with the analysis and end
of with the conclusion.
II. SYSTEM PLATFORM
System platform in this project is based on
Internet of Things technology. The system
consists of three main components. The task
components are sensing, controlling, data sending
or communication, data storing, data analysis and
data displaying. The sensing tasks are done by
several sensors. There are three sensors adapted to
this system platform, humidity, temperature and
Carbon Dioxide (CO2). Each of these sensors will
measure changes in environment inside the
greenhouse. Smart Control Panel used to activate
the control devices. Data storage done by the
internet database after received data onto gateway
and sensor nodes. Data will be further analysed
and activate control devices accordingly. Data is
displayed in various viewing methods, mobile
phone, PC and computer tab.
Figure 1 shows the components in wireless
sensor node. Wireless sensor node consists of a
power supply, processor, communication and
sensor element. Sensor elements involved in
measuring the air wetness, air heat and Carbon
Dioxide. Communication module is a P2P
LORAWAN. The other side module for
LORAWAN is located at the gateway.
Figure 1: Wireless Sensor Node
LoRa is a wireless communications system for
the Internet of Things, offering remote
communication (> 15 km in remote area) and low
power (5-10 years). LoRa is an IoT technology
built by Cycleo of Grenoble (France), then
acquired by Semtech in 2012 [4]. LoRa Physical
Layer Protocol works on sub-GHz frequencies of
frequency bands 433-, 868-, 915-, 923-MHz
depending on the regulation of each country [5].
LoRa frequency standard set by LoRa Alliance for
Asia region at frequency 923-925 MHz (AS923)
[6].
LoRaWAN technology will connect sensor
nodes and gateway. LoRa is a wireless
communication technology developed to create
the low-power, wide-area networks (LPWANs)
required for machine-to-machine (M2M) and
Internet of Things (IoT) applications [4], [5]. The
advantage of Long Range (LoRa®) is in the
technology’s long range capability [6].
LoRaWAN has advantages over other types of
communications such as mobile, BLE and WiFi.
In Figure 1, LoRaWAN has long-range
communication capabilities like cellular but low
power such as BLE, so its use is perfectly suited
for annual operating sensors with battery
resources and on wide area coverage. However,
LoRaWAN has limitations on data transmission
speeds that range from 0.3 -50 kbps. However this
is not a problem as data transmitted small-scale
sensors (order 10-20 bytes). Such applications are
particularly suitable for the transmission of
various sensors [7].
There are various sensors in SMH. The data
flow began from sensors inside the wireless
sensor node. The sensors captured the data about
temperature, humidity and CO2 inside the SMH.
Sensor node sent data onto gateway using
LORAWAN technology.
The distance between the nodes to the gateway
to this project is less than 100 meters. On the other
hand, the data captured by the gateway collector
is passed to the gateway LoRa module. Then, the
data from gateway LoRa module is sent to the
internet and to a database server. PC and mobile
phone users will gain data from the server. Figure
2 is the GUI for remote viewing purposes. Users
able to view project data onto anywhere.
Stakeholders also able to track the record of
parameters previous data. Data could be displayed
in text as well as graph forms.
Figure 2: Mobile User Interface Features
III. SOLUTION DESIGN
SMH has a controller to deal with observing
and control the environment. SMH screens the
parameters and activate related control devices.
Humidifier work is to build the wetness to the air.
Exhaust fan is to remove excess CO2. Ventilation
device mobilizes the air inside SMH. Exhaust fan
will suck out the air from cultivation area till the
inside air is homogenous. Sensors are
continuously reading the condition inside the
cultivation area. Sensing data will be transmitted
to the gateway using LORAWAN technology.
Data is analysed locally and will activate
control devices according to the condition.
Maximum allowable humidity level is 85%. The
humidifier will be stopped if humidity level more
than 85%. The humidifier will be activated if the
humidity level goes below 75%. Smart Control
Panel will power up the exhaust fan if Carbon
Dioxide levels are more than 600ppm. The
purpose of the exhaust fan is to suck the Carbon
Dioxide out from the cultivation area. Smart
Control Panel will power down the exhaust fan if
the Carbon Dioxide reading less than 500ppm.
Sensors is situated inside the sensor node. Raw
data information will be packed into a data frame
and sent to gateway. Sensor node sends data
regularly in every 90 second. The communication
between MCU and the collector is through serial
interface [8]. Gateway sent data onto web and
server via LoRa network.
In order to achieve higher performance in the
system design, a careful selection of
microprocessor has been done and adopted in this
IoT board design and evaluation. Two boards
were designed using different chipsets and both of
the systems were evaluated to understand their
performance against power consumption and cost
benefit. The two systems are Microcontroller
board Gateway and Microcontroller board LoRa
Node. The specification comparison are
summarized in Table 1.
Gateway LoRa Node
Speed 16-MHz, 80MHz
16MIPS
RTC Onboard Onboard
with battery with battery
backup backup
Power 2A peak, 300mA peak,
consumption 5mA standby 30uA sleep
System 5V DC 3.3V DC
Voltage
Table 2: Board comparison (specifications) for
microcontroller Gateway and Sensor Node
Gateway had the capability of adopting
multiple radio using radio module socket but was
not equipped with the sleep mode function and
kept training at 2A at peak and 5MA time
compared to LoRa Node using one chip set
solution (LoRa with microcontroller) that had the
duty cycle type of operation, giving the advantage
on less consumption and current at 30uA sleep
and 300mA during peak operation. Another
advantage of LoRa Node was the total cost of bill
materials at about RM10.00 as compared to
RM65.00 for Gateway.
Figure 3: Gateway board overview
Figure 4: LoRa Node board overview.
IV. DATA AND ANALYSIS
There are results of evaluation assessed for
System 1 and System 2. About current
consumption, most of the IoT devices or nodes
used power from battery. The lowest current
consumption will ensure a longer life time and
reduce battery size. By using high ends multi-
meter, both systems were evaluated in one day for
every hour, 30 minutes and every minute’s
transmission. The average current consumption is
as shown in Table 2.
The measurement focuses on two types of data
were the packet error rate (PER) and sensitivity as
shown in Table 3. This study involved a single IoT
node and a commercial router that were both
placed outdoors. The node acted as a transmitter
and the wireless router as a receiver. The node
continuously sent 180bytes of JSON frame
protocol to the receiver with a separation distance
of 100m. The node RF transmit power was always
at its maximum and set by the API library. Quality
of packets received referred to the number of
incorrect packets received per total number of
packet received and presented as Packet Error
Rate (PER). Received Signal Strength Indicator
(RSSI) on the other hand provided the
measurement of the power present at the receiver
side. The RSSI information and data was
produced by the sensor node.
Average current consumption comparison
between 8-bit & 32-bit board@25°C
Wakeup/Transmit 8-bit 32-bit
interval board board
Every 1 Hour
10mA 45uA
(24 times/day)
Every 30 Mins
30mA 60uA
(48 times/day)
Every Minute
50mA 90uA
(1440 times/day)
Table 2: Current consumption comparison.
Figure 5: Site Communication Test.
RF performance: both systems again were
compared and tested at project site. Figure 5
shows the exact location and set up of the test
field.
LoRa Node which is the 32 bit one chip
solution LoRa IoT board has shown significant
and superior performance in advance features and
cost effectiveness compared to Gateway (8 bit
microprocessor); even though LoRa is known to
have high power consumption, the pre-
programmed duty cycle type of operation (wake-
up and sleep operation) was the perfect method to
overcome the fast battery drain issue.
Figure 6 shows that at 919MHz frequency, the
RF signals were badly affected between rotation
angles -155 degrees until +95 degrees. This result
matched with the concrete wall location.
Figure 7 shows that at 921 MHz frequency, the
RF signals were slightly affected but still not good
between rotation angles -150 degrees until +135
degrees.
 Figure 8 shows that the RF signals were
slightly affected angle between -160 degrees until
+150 degrees. The above results found that the
high frequency signals were interrupted and the
RF power detected by the receiver was slightly
reduced when there was a concrete block nearby.
Precautions were considered prior to IoT node
installation to prevent signals degradation and
missing data problem.

Figure 8: RF Radiation at 923MHz

Average Smart Conventional

Per Mushroom mushroom
Mushroom House
Thickness 2.6cm 2.3cm
Weight 40gram 35gram
Table 3: Result Comparison between traditional
mushroom house and Smart Mushroom House.

Figure 6: RF Radiation at 919MHz.

V. CONCLUSIONS
In a Smart Mushroom House condition
utilizing control innovation, our test demonstrates
unmistakably that a framework is productive to
keep up the reasonable condition for mushroom
development. As a rule Smart Mushroom House
framework contributes important function to
maintain the mushroom development ambient.
Smart Mushroom House able to adjust the
conditions to the required ambient condition as
proposed by an agronomist. IoT technology in
smart Mushroom House has created better yields
contrasted with conventional mushroom house.

VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This mushroom venture was subsidized by

Figure 7: RF Radiation at 921MHz
Ministry of Science. We thank Agro-
Biotechnology Institute (ABI) and Koperasi
Pembangunan Desa (KPD) Sabah who gave
understanding and skill that helped the venture.
Table 3 shows the mushroom size comparison We thank to KPD Sabah who gave the area to the
between mushroom harvested from Smart task.
Mushroom House and harvested from
Conventional mushroom house. Result shows that
Smart Mushroom House produced bigger and
thicker mushroom compared to conventional
mushroom house within the same period of time.
.
 [7] Ferran Adelantado, Xavier Vilajosana, Pere Tuset-
Peiro, Borja Martinez, Joan Melià-Seguí, Thomas
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