2023 6th International Conference on Information Systems and Computer Networks (ISCON)

GLA University, Mathura, India. Mar 3-4, 2023

LoRaWAN Gateway Architecture for Aquaculture

Monitoring in Rural Area
2023 6th International Conference on Information Systems and Computer Networks (ISCON) | 979-8-3503-4696-1/23/$31.00 ©2023 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ISCON57294.2023.10111936

Dhruval Singh, Govind Sharma, Ishan Minhas, Gurkirat Singh, Pranav Mahajan, Poonam Verma, Gitanjali Chandwani Manocha
Electronics and Communication Engineering department
Thapar Institute of Engineering and technology, Patiala, Punjab, India
dhruvalmahal@gmail.com

Abstract—In fish farming, it is imperative to have detailed
data about water quality, dissolved oxygen and nutrients etc.,
not only in large scale classic farming applications but also for
urban aquaculture. To ensure the survival of the fish, the
water should be monitoring at regular intervals. This periodic
monitoring is cumbersome and prone to human error if done
manually. Live and automated monitoring will not only save
human effort but also increase the productivity of the fishing
farming. This automated monitoring requires robust network
connectivity to ensure live data collection using sensors and
storage in cloud/server. However, for rural area the network
connectivity may or may not be available. LoRaWAN is very
popular Internet of Things (IoT) access network technology. In
this paper, we carry out experiment to extend the network
range using LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) for
live and automated aquaculture monitoring. The monitoring is
done with the various sensors that collect data related to
quality of water at different time and sending the data to the
nearest LoRaWAN Sensor Node, which further forwards the
aggregated data to LoRaWAN gateway. The LoRaWAN radio
module that allows long-range wireless data transmission and
low-power battery operation for several months at reasonable
module costs The proposed system is evaluated in terms of
transmission range, battery runtime and sensor data accuracy.
Keywords—LoRaWAN, Gateway, Aquaculture, IoT
I. INTRODUCTION
Water quality monitoring for aquaculture is a crucial task
that needs to be performed periodically. Monitoring of water
quality requires sensors such as water conductivity, dissolved
oxygen, turbidity and pH improves feed ratios, minimizes
fish stress, reduces fish disease and mortality Such
monitoring can be automated by using physical sensors
sensing the water quality parameters like PH, impurities etc.
The data is transferred to the nearest LoRaWAN node in real
time and then the LoRaWAN nodes will transfer the data to
the Gateway. From the Gateway the data is uploaded to the
cloud where the analysis of the data is be done and the user
can monitor data on the mobile through application. LoRa
gateways are radio modules that serve as communication
devices within a LoRa network between end- devices and a
LoRaWAN network server (LNS). A LoRa gateway is
mostly used to transmit sensor data from an electrical device
to the cloud.
The Gateways are essential in the LoRa technology,
forming a bridge between the LoRa nodes and the user
application, where the messages are delivered and displayed.
These bridges will forward the data packets, after adding
some information regarding the quality of the reception, to
the IoT platform like The Things Network, Thing Speak,
Ada fruitIO, Ubidots, etc., from where the user can obtain
the requested data from the field, where the Node is placed.
The Gateways uses high bandwidth networks like Wi-Fi,
Ethernet or Cellular to connect to the IoT platform due to the
large traffic that can be collected from the connected Nodes.
A Gateway can communicate with hundreds or thousands
of LoRa nodes. If more Gateways are in the Node coverage
area, all the Gateways will receive the messages and forward
them to the IoT platform. Specialized algorithm are utilized
by IoT platform to filter the duplicated or unwanted
messages and will select the best Gateway to forward any
messages queued for downlink.
We demonstrate installation of the LoRaWAN gateway
and create a mesh network of the LoRa nodes sending data to
a single centralized LoRaWAN gateway with the following
objectives:
• Connecting the gateway to internet.
• Connecting the gateway to The things network.
• Measuring range of gateway and plotting RSSI VS
Distance graph.
For the implementation the following hardware and
software components are used. Sensors like analogue
conductivity sensor, pH sensor, dissolved oxygen sensor,
grove ORP sensor, bme680 sensor module, antenna, PyGate-
8 channel Lora gateway, PyCom FiPy Module, PyCom LoPy
Module [1]-[4]. For making a gateway we will be using
PyGate 8 channel LoRa gateway along with PyCom LoPy
module. With LoRa, Wifi and BLE, the LoPy is the only
triple bearer Micro Python enabled micro controller on the
market today – the perfect enterprise grade IoT platform for
your connected Things. The LoPy can also function as a
single-channel gateway, however The Things Network
discourages the use of single-channel gateways. Thus, multi-
gateway is used instead.
II. METHODOLOY
A. Parts of the Network
Fig. 1. View of LoRaWAN network

979-8-3503-4696-1/23/$31.00 ©2023 IEEE 1

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 The whole network involves different components which
are as follows:
i. LPWAN sensors: Low Power Wide Area Network
sensors are responsible for detecting the physical or
chemical changes around them and send the data to
gateway through nodes. They consume very less
power and can be operated for many years without
changing the battery.
ii. Gateways: It is like a central head which receives
signals form sensors and connect them to the cloud
server for computing and data processing. All the
data will pass through the gateway before getting
uploaded.
iii. Network server: These are the dedicated devices that
run software made for fulfilling the client request
and reply with the desired response.
iv. Application server: It is the dedicated server that
hosts applications or software that deliver a business
application through a protocol made for
communication. It helps the user to interact with the
lower devices and also read the data sent by the
sensors.
B. Overall Working of project
Firstly the hardware needs to be connected to the
network. Thus, in order to do that we connect Lopy module
to the pygate and upload the code of WiFi connection into
the pygate with required SSID (service set identifier) and
password. Now the device will connect with network. Also
we need to register the gateway to The Things Network
server so that we can upload the data there and view the data
whenever required. When the nodes in the network send data
to the gateway, it upload the data to the cloud server. The
uploaded data will be visible on the dashboard available on
the website. From there data can be retrieved and can be
viewed by the user on the mobile application[5]-[12].
C. Implementation in real life
In figure 2 we can see various devices numbered from 1
to 6. The device with number 1 is the sensor which monitors
parameter of the aquarium. There can be more than one
sensors according to the number of parameters we want to
measure. Then it is sent to nearest node (number 5). Then it
is received by the nearest gateway and then sent to the cloud,
the device is measured as 2, 3. Various analysis algorithms
run on the server and required action is taken by the user as
he is able to check the sensor’s data in the mobile app
(number 4). Accordingly action is taken like feeding the
food, turning the oxygen device, turning water motor etc.
Fig. 2. Real life implementation of Model
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(number 6). This can be implemented on large scale so it
would require large number of gateways and nodes to cover
the entire area. If a node is in the vicinity of two or more
gateways, then the data is sent to all the gateways and the
signal strength along with other parameters like error is
calculated and communication is done with the gateway
which is most responsive along with less error and packet
drop rate.
III. CALCULATING RANGE OF GATEWAY
Range is very important parameter for calculating the
performance the network connectivity. For that we will be
considering various parameters like link budget, path loss
etc. Link budget refers to the losses between the transmitter
and receiver. Path loss, or path attenuation, is the reduction
in power density of an electromagnetic wave as it propagates
through space. For measuring the network strength we will
use Field Test Device. More specifically we use Adenuis
which is also LoRaWAN certified. It has sensitivity of
140dBm. It also measures Geolocation of measurement
points.
Now range testing can be of two types: user-based range
test and device based connection test. User based range test
can also be termed as short time test as it gives a rough
estimate of signal strength at the point of measurement. It
measures strength by sending data packets regularly in short
intervals to LoRa devices. Also the user moves in the
location to moves the strength. It is useful only for first view
of the network. Whereas in device based connection test it
estimates the signal strength by considering various factors
over long period of time. These factors include weather
conditions, moving objects like cars, other RF influences,
seasonal influences like vegetation etc. It takes into account
various other factors as mentioned and is often considered
very useful.
A. Data for Range estimation
Most of the Indian cities for which the data we have
collected, have very few tall buildings, some tall buildings
and many buildings that are only a few stories high.
Description of the setup:
x These were Non LOS connections
x Spreading Factor: 12
x Frequency: 868MHz Band
x The Rx Gateway was mounted at 12m height
x Tx changed between 5 control points
TABLE I. SUCCESS RATE FOR DIFFERENT INSTANCES
Checkpoint Distance to Number of Success Rate
Gateway (m) buildings (%)
between Tx &
Rx
1 830 4 96
2 863 6 100
3 960 14 92
4 1070 6 98
5 1530 14 98
 B. Range Optimisation
Success Rate in the above experiment not being 100%, is
countered by LoRaWAN standards. The communication can
be configured in a way that the messages have to be
confirmed by the receiver and the sender waits for an
acknowledgement and sends the data again if the
acknowledgement is missing.
At checkpoint 1 the signal passes 4 buildings out of
which two were high rise buildings resulting in disruption of
line of sight and also attenuates the signal and provides
success rate of 96%. At checkpoint 2 signal passed through 6
buildings and success rate is 100% because they were low
rise apartments thus signal reached the gateway even form a
distance of 863m. At checkpoint 3 at a distance about 960m Fig. 4. RSSI vs. Distance Graph (45m height positioning)
14 buildings came in range of gateway but the success rate
was 92%. Out of 14 eight buildings were high rise and rest
IV. CONCLUSION
were low rise apartments. At checkpoint 4 the area was
almost empty as a result greater success rate is seen and only LoRaWAN is an excellent piece of technology that can
six buildings were there as obstacles and covered 1070 m. At be really useful. Hereby we make some conclusions from the
checkpoint 5 success rate was 98%. It had five high rise work around LoRaWAN Gateway. Following are some set
apartments which followed an open space after which there of conclusions we can accept.
again came some more obstacles which comprised some low
x We setup a Gateway in LoRaWAN for the purpose
rise apartments with some parks also. [13]- [16]
of receiving data from the nodes as well as for
Three Strategies to improve the coverage and reach: uploading that data to the cloud.
x The ranges in the test could have been increased by x The Gateway setup is then connected to the required
accepting single failed transmissions and then network.
retransmission.
x The parameter that mattered the most to us was the
x Topologies with higher number of redundant range of the gateway. We worked some ways to
gateways result in increased network coverage and estimate the correct range for the gateway. Various
improved success rate. ranges and coverage were recorded for different
heights.
x The Range can be significantly improved by
increasing the height of the gateway. x We discussed different strategies to improve the
coverage and reach.
In an experiment, three Gateways were installed at
different heights (5m, 10m and 45m) and various range and x To check the efficiency and quality of this setup, the
penetration tests were conducted. [17] parameter that mattered the most to us was the RSSI.
Therefore, we plotted ‘RSSI vs distance’ on a graph.
x To increase range, we need to:
o Elevate our antennas to a required height.
o Use antennas with higher gains.
o Use directional antennas and not omni-
directional ones.

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