Open Access

Harikrishnan Thanipparambu Narayanan Kutty

• Approximately 71% of Earth's surface is covered by water, with only 3% being fresh water suitable for human use, a majority of which is trapped in glaciers and permafrost. Freshwater ecosystems, vital for sustaining life and biodiversity, face heavy utilization by humans, mainly for agriculture, industry, and municipal needs, leading to an annual freshwater consumption of 32,928 km³. Agriculture is responsible for approximately 70% of this consumption, highlighting the critical need to enhance water-use efficiency in the face of escalating scarcity and the projected requirement for a 15% increase in freshwater withdrawals, necessary to support a 50% growth in agricultural production by 2050. Soil health plays a pivotal role in sustainable agriculture, influencing plant production, water quality, and nutrient recycling. In this context, precision agriculture, particularly sensor-based approaches like LoRaWAN, emerges as a key solution with its low power usage, long-range capabilities, and cost-effectiveness. However, their adoption isApproximately 71% of Earth's surface is covered by water, with only 3% being fresh water suitable for human use, a majority of which is trapped in glaciers and permafrost. Freshwater ecosystems, vital for sustaining life and biodiversity, face heavy utilization by humans, mainly for agriculture, industry, and municipal needs, leading to an annual freshwater consumption of 32,928 km³. Agriculture is responsible for approximately 70% of this consumption, highlighting the critical need to enhance water-use efficiency in the face of escalating scarcity and the projected requirement for a 15% increase in freshwater withdrawals, necessary to support a 50% growth in agricultural production by 2050. Soil health plays a pivotal role in sustainable agriculture, influencing plant production, water quality, and nutrient recycling. In this context, precision agriculture, particularly sensor-based approaches like LoRaWAN, emerges as a key solution with its low power usage, long-range capabilities, and cost-effectiveness. However, their adoption is limited in small to medium-scale farms, primarily in regions lacking mechanized farming, due to high initial investments and extended return periods. Challenges include the cost of new technology adoption, training, and the high expense of purchasing and maintaining advanced hardware. This thesis focuses on making precision agriculture more accessible to smaller farms by exploring affordable hardware alternatives based on LoRaWAN technologies. This involves establishing a LoRaWAN test station at Hochschule Hof to test both affordable and expensive sensors variants in agricultural-like conditions for generating valuable data. The objective is to assess the practicality of using more economical sensor variants against their expensive counterparts and to develop a method for a data-driven comparative analysis of these sensors' performance in agricultural applications. The conclusion of the thesis reveals that the LoRaWAN test station at Hochschule Hof successfully tested both affordable and expensive sensor variants. The affordable sensors effectively measured parameters like air temperature, humidity, and light intensity, but were less precise for scientific research in aspects like wind direction. Notable deviations in some weather and soil profile measurements indicate the necessity of additional studies. The research also evaluated the independent system set up at the university, noting its effectiveness and economic benefits compared to the Decentlab platform, albeit lacking in data visualization. Ultimately, the feasibility of replacing expensive sensors with affordable variants in precision agriculture was explored, with detailed findings and recommendations presented.…