Smol: Sensing Soil Moisture using LoRa

Daniel Kiv, Garvita Allabadi, Berkay Kaplan, Robin Kravets

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Technologies for environmental and agricultural monitoring are on the rise, however there is a lack of small, low-power, and low-cost sensing devices in the industry. One of these monitoring tools is a soil moisture sensor. Soil moisture has significant effects on crop health and yield, but commercial monitors are very expensive, require manual use, or constant attention. This calls for a simple and low cost solution based on a novel technology. In this work we introduce smol: Sensing Soil Moisture using LoRa, a low-cost system to measure soil moisture using received signal strength indicator (RSSI) and transmission power. It is compact and can be deployed in the field to collect data automatically with little manual intervention. Our design is enabled by the phenomenon that soil moisture attenuates wireless signals, so the signal strength between a transmitter-receiver pair decreases. We exploit this physical property to determine the variation in soil moisture. We designed and tested our measurement-based prototype in both indoor and outdoor environments. With proper regression calibration, we show soil moisture can be predicted using LoRa parameters.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationLP-IoT 2021 - Proceedings of the 2022 1st ACM Workshop on No Power and Low Power Internet-of-Things, Part of MOBICOM 2021
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages21-27
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)9781450387026
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 31 2022
Event1st ACM Workshop on No Power and Low Power Internet-of-Things, LP-IoT 2021 - Part of MOBICOM 2021 - New Orleans, United States
Duration: Jan 31 2022Feb 4 2022

Publication series

NameLP-IoT 2021 - Proceedings of the 2022 1st ACM Workshop on No Power and Low Power Internet-of-Things, Part of MOBICOM 2021

Conference

Conference1st ACM Workshop on No Power and Low Power Internet-of-Things, LP-IoT 2021 - Part of MOBICOM 2021
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityNew Orleans
Period1/31/222/4/22

Keywords

  • Internet of things
  • Lora
  • Sensing
  • Soil

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Software

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Smol: Sensing Soil Moisture using LoRa'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this