Design And Analysis Of Low-Cost Lora Mesh Network For Reliable And Secured Precision Agriculture

Author

Yamini Swetha Nadella, Prairie View A&M University

Date of Award

12-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Electrical Engineering

Abstract

Rural precision agriculture requires reliable, low-cost, and energy-efficient communication systems that can cover large farmland areas. Traditional wireless technologies, such as Wi-Fi, cellular, and satellite communication, are either expensive, consume too much power or are even unreliable in maintaining connectivity in large farmlands, which is a common case in rural precision agriculture. LoRa-based networks support long-range communication with extremely low power consumption, making them an appropriate solution for precision agriculture applications in rural farmland areas. Current LoRaWAN systems employ star topology, which also limits their ability to offer efficient, multi-hop connectivity in rural environments.

This thesis presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of a five-node LoRa mesh network for precision agriculture, utilizing ESP32 microcontrollers, RFM95 LoRa transceivers, GPS modules, and a suite of soil and environmental sensors, interfaced to Tago.io’s cloud-based platform for data analysis and visualization. Experimental results from controlled tests demonstrated a Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) of 96.8% and an average end-to-end latency of 2.1 seconds, validating the network’s reliability and efficiency during multi-hop operation.

Additionally, this study evaluated the mesh network's performance with respect to payload-level integrity. Controlled bit flip attacks and character-level corruption tests indicate that, while GPS systems are protected from bit-level data corruption at the physical layer through efficient CRC verification, undetected character-level payload corruption at the network layer can occur. Such corruption may cause significant GPS shifts and variations in sensor values without triggering any alarms. This is an area in precision agriculture utilizing LoRa communication that has been barely explored for potential threats to data integrity. This work proved that low-cost mesh LoRa solutions for wireless communication can be effectively used to extend trustworthy coverage for sensors, as well as explore key issues of data integrity for implementing trustworthy, smart farmland systems.

Index Terms- agriculture, data integrity, GPS, IoT, LoRa, LPWAN, mesh networks, precision agriculture, rural connectivity, wireless sensor networks.

Committee Chair/Advisor

Annamalai Annamalai

Committee Member

Mohamed Chouikha

Committee Member

Akshay Raghavendra Kulkarni

Committee Member

Sheikh Tareq Ahmed

Publisher

Prairie View A & M University

Rights

Date of Digitization

02/05/2026

Contributing Institution

J. B . Coleman Library

City of Publication

Prairie View

MIME Type

Application/PDF

Recommended Citation

Nadella, Y. (2025). Design And Analysis Of Low-Cost Lora Mesh Network For Reliable And Secured Precision Agriculture. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.pvamu.edu/pvamu-theses/1666