# Leveraging LoRaWAN Technology for Precision Agriculture in Greenhouses
## 2 Related Work  
Greenhouse technology is widely accepted as a crucial part of agricultural engineering. Early in 1994 [PERSON] et al. [20], mentioned the importance of monitoring soil and environment for quality yield. Thereafter, there has been continuous research on the integration of WSNs in greenhouses. Initially, farmers were reluctant to use WSNs because of the cost but with the progressive technology development, the overall cost has gone remarkable down [21]. WSNs provide monitoring for precision agriculture in the greenhouse using multi-parameter monitoring [22] and using low-power and reliable wireless communication technology. The communication technology and the right selection of application-specific sensor nodes are an integral part of WSN for PA in greenhouses. There have been several contributions [23; 24] to lower the management cost with the help of agricultural policy and innovative farming methods. Also, for better analysis the sensor data are integrated with the video information for precision effective farming [25]. However, it is equally crucial to access the risks associated with the new agricultural practices before its adoption on the field [26]. WSNs are mostly battery constrained, the average battery life of a wireless node in precision agriculture use case lasts for only a few months [3]. However, the desired power consumption should stretch the battery life for at-least more than a year. This requires a taxonomy of energy-efficient and energy harvesting techniques as mentioned by author [PERSON] et al. in their review article on energy-efficient WSNs for PA [10]. There have been remarkable research contributions in power reduction techniques in WSNs by exploiting radio schemes, routing and optimizing link connectivity for long term monitoring [27]. In greenhouses, hygiene is maintained with high priority to prevent the spread of pathogen agent that can cause disease to crop. Therefore, the demand for self-maintenance and long battery life plays a vital role in greenhouses to avoid frequent hardware visits. Ideally, even if the node fails or the battery dies, the network coverage should be maintained. For realizing this scenario, research contribution has been done in different schemes like clustering, role-based approach, etc. [28]. Another prototype has been introduced for maintaining equal use of energy among different nodes by combining energy harvesting with dynamic job switching of sensors based on left energy [29]. With the requirement of less space and more production [30], the adaptation of LPWANS for transmitting data over long distance with low cost is becoming considerate [31]. In parallel, new energy harvesting methods [32] are to be explored as existing solutions like solar panels, etc. [33]. are difficult to be used in greenhouses due to complex covered hardware topology [34]. LoRaWAN is an open standard which uses LoRa modulation to enable long-range and low-cost solution with optimal power consumption. There has been a growing interest of using LoRaWAN for precision agriculture, such as the design of the greenhouse irrigation system (master/slave) [35], case study on open agricultural monitoring in Kenya [36] and also precision farming in viticulture [16]. These use cases require further end-to-end scalable solutions and a remote monitoring dashboard for data visualization. The complications and prospects for the role of sensor boxes are given in [17]. It states the contradiction of reading values as the temperature is elevated inside the box due to minimal or no air circulation, which affects the humidity reading as well. Also, it states the prospect solution for this problem to be an air-ventilated box, where sensors are either placed outside the box or near the fan for air circulation. Instead of tight packaging, it is recommended by the authors to place the sensors in different parts of the box [37] like humidity sensor near the fan, temperature sensor at the border or out of the box and sound sensor away from the fan.