Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date (Issue Year)

2024

Journal Name

MDPI-Sensors

Abstract

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Hardware Development and Evaluation of Multihop Cluster-Based Agricultural IoT Based on Bluetooth Low-Energy and LoRa Communication Technologies

by Emmanuel Effah 1,*,†, George Ghartey 1, Joshua Kweku Aidoo 1and Ousmane Thiare 2     1 Computer Science and Engineering Department, University of Mines and Technology, Tarkwa P.O. Box 237, Ghana 2 Department of Informatics, Gaston Berger University, Saint-Louis PB 234, Senegal * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. † The First Author contributed 70% while the remaining Authors unequally contributed 30% to this work. Sensors 2024, 24(18), 6113; https://doi.org/10.3390/s24186113 Submission received: 26 August 2024 / Revised: 16 September 2024 / Accepted: 19 September 2024 / Published: 21 September 2024 (This article belongs to the Section Internet of Things) Downloadkeyboard_arrow_down  Browse Figures   Review Reports Versions Notes

Abstract

In this paper, we present the development and evaluation of a contextually relevant, cost-effective, multihop cluster-based agricultural Internet of Things (MCA-IoT) network. This network utilizes commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) and LoRa communication technologies, along with the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ (RPi 3 B+), to address the challenges of climate change-induced global food insecurity in smart farming applications. Employing the lean engineering design approach, we initially implemented a centralized cluster-based agricultural IoT (CA-IoT) hardware testbed incorporating BLE, RPi 3 B+, STEMMA soil moisture sensors, UM25 m, and LoPy low-power Wi-Fi modules. This system was subsequently adapted and refined to assess the performance of the MCA-IoT network. This study offers a comprehensive reference on the novel, location-independent MCA-IoT technology, including detailed design and deployment insights for the agricultural IoT (Agri-IoT) community. The proposed solution demonstrated favorable performance in indoor and outdoor environments, particularly in water-stressed regions of Northern Ghana. Performance evaluations revealed that the MCA-IoT technology is easy to deploy and manage by users with limited expertise, is location-independent, robust, energy-efficient for battery operation, and scalable in terms of task and size, thereby providing a versatile range of measurements for future applications. Our results further demonstrated that the most effective approach to utilizing existing IoT-based communication technologies within a typical farming context in sub-Saharan Africa is to integrate them.

Keywords

Internet of Things (IoT), agricultural IoT (Agri-IoT), multihop cluster-based agricultural IoT (MCA-IoT)

Grantee Name(s)

Emmanuel Effah

Project Title

Robust and Affordable Smart Agri-IoT Technology 

Type of Grant

JIRA Award

Funding Statement

This work was carried out with the financial support of the icipe–World Bank Financing Agreement No. D347-3A and the World Bank Korea Trust Fund Agreement No. TF0A8639 for the PASET Regional Scholarship and Innovation Fund. The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the official opinions of the donors.

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