Application of LPWAN Technologies Based on LoRa in the Monitoring of Water Sources of The Andean Wetlands

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a water source monitoring system based on LoRa technology for the Tres Lagunas Andean high-altitude wetlands ecosystem (Ecuador). The solution has been implemented using mainly an ATmega1284p microcontroller, an SX1278 transceiver and hydrological sensors. The data is transmitted from the study site to the TTN server and sent via the MQTT protocol to the Node-RED platform. On the other hand, a graphical interface has been developed that allows analyzing historical data of temperature, dissolved oxygen (DO), oxidation-reduction potential (ORP) and hydrogen potential (pH). Furthermore, energy consumption tests and LoRa physical layer experiments have been performed with the prototype. Results reveal the proper operation of the prototype. In particular, it has been observed that SF9 and SF10 present packet reception rates higher than 97%. Regarding SF7 and SF8, they was discarded for this type of scenarios due to the packet loss rate higher than 10%. The main contribution of this work is the proposal of a portable, low-cost and open source prototype, focused on the transmission of hydrological data obtained in Andean high-altitude lakes through IoT technologies for the administration, management and control of water resources that represent a fundamental component of a smart city.