# Proposed Fuzzy-NN Algorithm with LoRa Communication Protocol for Clustered Irrigation Systems
## 2 Proposed Irrigation System Architecture  
Authors propose a smart irrigation system based on equipment and technologies supported by the open source community. The system is called Open Watering System (OWS). The OWS system was implemented by focusing on low price, low power consumption and long-range coverage for data measurements transmission. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Wireless** & **Maximum** & **TX Current** & & \\
**Communication** & **Coverage Range** & **Consumption** & **Throughput** & **Scalability/Max Nodes** \\
**Technology** & **(m)** & **(mA)** & & \\ \hline
3G/4G LTE & Cellular Network & 260–370 & 1–50 Mbit/s & 1155 active transmissions/site \\ LoRa/LoRaWaN & 12,000 & 40 & 5 Kbit/s & 5000–20,000 nodes (LoRaWAN) & \\  & & & & (50 Bytes payload, 7.3 packet/hour) \\ RFM69 & 500 & 80 & 100 Kbit/s & 65,536 \\ ZigBee & 100–1000 & 35–65 & 1 Mbit/s\(-\)250 Kbit/s & 65,536 \\ Bluetooth LE & 50 & \textless{}25 & 1 Mbps & 7 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Main characteristics of wireless communication technologies Measurements [22; 23; 24; 25]. The proposed OWS system includes the following parts: (i) The microcontroller processing module (ATMega328P) that controls the sensors, the actuator that is responsible for data upload to the AS; (ii) the system soil moisture sensors; (iii) the actuator electro valve (servo-valve), with its attached sensors (luminosity sensor, temperature sensor and flow meter sensor); (iv) the communication transponder module and (v) the Application Server service (AS) for measurement storage, smart algorithm (FITRA) implementation and data visualization. OWS uses at least one soil moisture sensor [29] and up to 8 sensors, which are controlled by a cheap MCU controller unit. The limit of 8 sensors per actuator was enforced by the microcontroller's capacity of 8 analog ports. If more analog ports are needed per actuator, a microcontroller with more analog ports can be used instead. In Figures 1 and 2, two versions of the proposed OWS system are presented. Both versions use the same set of sensors and actuator but different communication technologies. In Figure 1, the OWS implementation that uploads data to the Application Server (AS) using a 3G transponders presented. For the purpose of minimizing 3G excessive energy consumption, the sensory data are uploaded periodically using a static upload period \(T_{p}\) followed by a receive control interval \(T_{k}\). During the upload and control intervals the data as described by the FITRA application protocol (see Section 4.3) are sent via the 3G transponder to the Application Service (AS). Afterwards the transponder enters the sleep mode until the next upload interval. The FITRA protocol header and payload are encapsulated over UDP and sent to the AS. According to Figure 1, 3G technology is an easily deployed solution (ad-hoc) and exempts the user from maintaining a network infrastructure of its own carrying out the messages to the AS. However, as far as the implementation of Figure 1, authors observed the following disadvantages: (i) the costto the farmer of 3G provider services adds up; and (ii) it requires a significant amount of energy to operate autonomously. Specifically, it requires up to 6-10 times more transmission energy than narrowband LoRa, as shown in Table 1.  
Focusing on finding a way to minimize the disadvantages of 3G OWS implementation, the OWS solution over LoRa was implemented by the authors (see Figure 2). OWS LoRa system uses a single-channel LoRa concentrator device called a gateway. The gateway was implemented using an RPi microprocessor [30], which is connected to the RFM96 LoRa transponder via the USB UART [31]. The RPi microprocessor is responsible for controlling the LoRa channel data uplinks from the actuator's microcontroller as well as uploading the microcontroller messages to the AS via UDP using either Ethernet or 3G/4G Internet connectivity.