Sensor-free Soil Moisture Sensing Using LoRa Signals

Abstract

Soil moisture sensing is one of the most important components in smart agriculture. It plays a critical role in increasing crop yields and reducing water waste. However, existing commercial soil moisture sensors are either expensive or inaccurate, limiting their real-world deployment. In this paper, we utilize wide-area LoRa signals to sense soil moisture without a need of dedicated soil moisture sensors. Different from traditional usage of LoRa in smart agriculture which is only for sensor data transmission, we leverage LoRa signal itself as a powerful sensing tool. The key insight is that the dielectric permittivity of soil which is closely related to soil moisture can be obtained from phase readings of LoRa signals. Therefore, antennas of a LoRa node can be placed in the soil to capture signal phase readings for soil moisture measurements. Though promising, it is non-trivial to extract accurate phase information due to unsynchronization of LoRa transmitter and receiver. In this work, we propose to include a low-cost switch to equip the LoRa node with two antennas to address the issue. We develop a delicate chirp ratio approach to cancel out the phase offset caused by transceiver unsynchronization to extract accurate phase information. The proposed system design has multiple unique advantages including high accuracy, robustness against motion interference and large sensing range for large-scale deployment in smart agriculture. Experiments with commodity LoRa nodes show that our system can accurately estimate soil moisture at an average error of 3.1%, achieving a performance comparable to high-end commodity soil moisture sensors. Field studies show that the proposed system can accurately sense soil moisture even when the LoRa gateway is 100 m away from the LoRa node, enabling wide-area soil moisture sensing for the first time.

Survey for Soil Sensing with IOT and Traditional Systems

“…While commercial alternatives often exceed $100, these systems are typically priced below that threshold, yet they deliver performance on par with premium devices. Secondly, the adaptability of IoT systems is commendable; they can be seamlessly integrated beneath the soil's surface [12,13,15,16].…”

“…Lastly, these systems are equipped with extensive communication capabilities and compatible with several types of soil surfaces as shown in Figure 3. For instance, the system in [16] boasts a communication range of 100 ms, while [15] extends this to an impressive 2.4 km.…”

“…The work of [16] is the first practical deployment of soil moisture measurement using LoRa signals in open environments. In their study, the authors introduce a system that utilizes LoRa signals to measure soil moisture without the need for specialized sensors embedded in the soil.…”

“…Recently, RF-based soil sensing has been introduced as a portable and cost-effective alternative for on-site soil analysis [12][13][14][15][16]. When contrasted with traditional reflectance spectroscopy experiments, RF-based techniques present several advantages.…”

The Role and Application Areas of LoRa Communication in Smart Agriculture, A Proposed Architecture, and Its Performance Analysis

“…Toprak nem değerlerinin alınmasında maliyetleri azaltmak adına sensör kullanmayan, yerine LoRa sinyalinden faydalanılan iki çalışma öne çıkmaktadır. İlk çalışmada [37], toprak neminin mahsul verim ve su israfının azaltılmasındaki önemi ile mevcut toprak nem sensörlerinin pahalılığı ve büyük hata payı vurgulanarak yeni bir teknik önerilmiştir. Çalışmadaki kilit anlayış toprak nemi ile toprak dielektrik geçirgenliğin arasındaki ilişkiden toprak içerisine yerleştirilen LoRa modülü sinyal faz okumalarından toprak nem bilgisinin çıkarılabileceği olmuştur.…”