Križanović Višnja, Grgić Krešimir, Spišić Josip, Žagar Drago
Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Information Technology, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, 31000 Osijek, Croatia.
Sensors (Basel). 2023 Jul 12;23(14):6332. doi: 10.3390/s23146332.
Sensor networks, as a special subtype of wireless networks, consist of sets of wirelessly connected sensor nodes often placed in hard-to-reach environments. Therefore, it is expected that sensor nodes will not be powered from the power grid. Instead, sensor nodes have their own power sources, the replacement of which is often impractical and requires additional costs, so it is necessary to ensure minimum energy consumption. For that reason, the energy efficiency of wireless sensor networks used for monitoring environmental parameters is essential, especially in remote networking scenarios. In this paper, an overview of the latest research progress on wireless sensor networks based on LoRa was provided. Furthermore, analyses of energy consumption of sensor nodes used in agriculture to observe environmental parameters were conducted using the results of real measurements in the field, as well as simulations carried out based on collected data about real equipment. Optimization methods of energy consumption, in terms of choosing the appropriate data collection processes from the conducted field measurements, as well as the settings of network radio parameters imitating real conditions used in conducted simulations were highlighted. In the analyses, special emphasis was placed on choosing the optimal packet size. Unlike in other papers analyzing energy efficiency of LoRa communication, in this paper, it was proven that the adjustment of the transmission speed to the actual size of the packet is important for better energy efficiency of communication and that it can reduce energy consumption considerably. Moreover, in the paper, the contents of a packet that can be used in precision agriculture is suggested in order to prove that the 6-bit packet is sufficient for energy-efficient collection of parameters from the environment, in contrast to the 11-bit packets used in standard commercially available equipment.
传感器网络作为无线网络的一种特殊子类型，由一组通过无线方式连接的传感器节点组成，这些节点通常放置在难以到达的环境中。因此，预计传感器节点无法从电网获取电力。相反，传感器节点有自己的电源，而更换电源通常不切实际且需要额外成本，所以有必要确保最低能耗。出于这个原因，用于监测环境参数的无线传感器网络的能源效率至关重要，尤其是在远程组网场景中。本文提供了基于LoRa的无线传感器网络的最新研究进展概述。此外，利用实地实际测量结果以及基于收集到的有关实际设备的数据进行的模拟，对农业中用于观测环境参数的传感器节点的能耗进行了分析。强调了能耗的优化方法，包括从实地测量中选择合适的数据收集过程，以及在模拟中设置模仿实际情况的网络无线电参数。在分析中，特别强调了选择最佳数据包大小。与其他分析LoRa通信能源效率的论文不同，本文证明了根据数据包的实际大小调整传输速度对于提高通信能源效率很重要，并且可以大幅降低能耗。此外，本文还建议了可用于精准农业的数据包内容，以证明与标准商用设备中使用的11位数据包相比，6位数据包足以实现从环境中高效节能地收集参数。
