Agricultural Internet Of Things, Low Power Wide Area Network, Firmware-Over-The Air/ Samy Hamed Mohamed Sharf

Supervisor:
Ahmed H. Madian

Thesis (M.A.)—Nile University, Egypt, 2022 .

"Includes bibliographical references"

Contents:

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
List of Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Chapters:
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Research Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2 Research Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4 Thesis Target Approach Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.5 [AG IoT]-Aims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.6 [AG IoT]-Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.7 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2. Literature Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.1 Overview of Internet of Things in Ag-IoT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2 Ag-IoT communication technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2.1 WiFi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2.2 RFID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2.3 Mobile communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2.4 Bluetooth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
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2.2.5 LoRa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.3 Precision Agriculture WSN Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.3.1 Electrical and Electromagnetic Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3.2 Optical Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3.3 Mechanical Sensors for Crop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3.4 Acoustic and Air Flow Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3.5 Electrochemical Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.4 IoT-based smart agriculture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.5 Principal advantages of IoT in smart agriculture . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.6 Ag-IoT Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.6.1 DHT11 Sensor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.6.2 Water Pump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.7 Challenges for Agriculture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.8 Ag-IoT Data Communication Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.9 Ag-IoT Supported Low-Power Microcontroller . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.10 FOTA Architecture Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3. On Flashing Over The Air ”FOTA” for IoT Appliances - An ATMEL
Prototype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.1 System Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.1.1 System Block Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.1.2 Hardware Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.1.3 Software Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.2 Experimental Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.2.1 Remote Programming Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.2.2 Wi-Fi Remote Flashing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.2.3 LoRa Remote Flashing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4. An Efficient OTA firmware updating Architecture based on LoRa suitable
for agricultural IoT Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.1 The Paradigm FOTA Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.2 The Proposed System Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.2.1 LoRa Firmware Uploader Circuit Interpretation . . . . . . . 56
4.3 Simulation & Excremental Execution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.3.1 Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.3.2 Excremental Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
5. ETA32 Training Board Of Innovative Agriculture Simulation . . . . . . . 63
5.1 The Paradigm FOTA Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
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6. Conclusion and Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
6.1 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
6.2 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Abstract:
In An agricultural from perspective Internet of things-IoT domain known as “AgIoT”. These lands lacking of wireless internet connectivity infrastructure. One of
the big issues in this domain are how to gathering, manipulate and transfer data
wirelessly with a revitalization performance and considerate rationing of energy consumption. A low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) one of famous type of wireless
telecommunication wide area network structured amid a set of low bit rate operated
depending on batteries.
In some agricultural areas, there are obstacles to collecting, processing and transmit a set of data contain characteristics and information related to the environment
suitable for the type of crops in a manner appropriate to their nature. This nature of
crops is rapidly changed during the four seasons that shifting weather condition during the year. Increased Efficiency: Farmers can monitor the crops in real-time, and
thus, forecast concerns and make educated choices before they arise. Less Consumption of Water and Energy: Sensors throughout the fields assist the farmers calculate
the right resources necessary. Reduced Operation Costs: The utility of IoT provides
higher revenues as it leads to less human intervention owing to automated procedures.
Low Usage of Chemicals: IoT-based solutions let farmers convert to cost-effective and
eco-friendly agricultural practises via much-reduced consumption of toxic pesticides
and fertilisers. Better Food Quality: Through the methods stated above, producers
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may create the circumstances required to increase the quality of the crops. Monitoring of Farms From Anywhere: Farming organisations may monitor several fields in
diverse places from any part of the globe.
Furthermore, in the scalability issue of these networks necessitates us to design
and implement a “FOTA” paradigm that’s comprehensively fit for “LPWAN” network
criteria. In this research we propose a complete architecture of an “LPWAN” networks
that’s capable of providing “FOTA” Capabilities to a grouped of remote sensory nodes
using a low power Micro-controller from PIC Families. We provide excremental work
on flashing remote sensor node based on Wireless Sensor Network - WSN using LoRa
module based on “LPWAN” approach to achieve the lowest energy consumption in
this use case.

Text in English, abstracts in English and Arabic