Developing an Agricultural Internet of Things System Using Low Power Wide Area Technology

Smart agriculture is used by many farmers and its effects, which decrease the workload on farms and increase crop yield, have been confirmed. However, it has not yet become popular with medium- or small-scale farmers in Japan, many of whom are quite elderly, because of its high cost and uncertainties about its effect. Therefore, we proposed an agricultural Internet of Things (IoT) system using low power wide area (LPWA) wireless technology. The IoT system consists of a sensor network, remote control devices, and a smartphone application. Our LPWA communication system covers all fields in a large farm; therefore, farmers can use our system at a low cost by sharing the communication system. Furthermore, because the smartphone application allows farmers share farm information with privacy they can control, they can use the application to support each other. We began experiments using this IoT system with farmers; this paper presents the results of those experiments and discusses the availability of this system.