Enabling Joint IoT Solutions in Science and Agriculture

The aim of this project is to trial an open Internet of Things (IoT) network on a science campus and an agricultural setting along with a simple internet interface and example sensor nodes. On a science campus in Oxfordshire and a smart farm in Berkshire, we will integrate 5 LoRa hubs and over 10 LoRa enabled smart sensors as examples of nodes. These nodes will use a mesh networking topology and have a connection to the wider internet via multiple IoT interfaces, including satellite IoT and 5G.

This project aims to encourage the other companies and research organisations in that area to add their own sensors and network infrastructure to improve the network as a whole. The wider aim is to allow networks that improve the local environmental quality to be installed that can benefit everyone as a whole without many individual and proprietary communication methods being used.

This is also in keeping with the role of citizen science, as it allows for a low cost introduction to environmental monitoring, and a robust and standardised method of creating and storing data via the network we plan to introduce. The added benefit of this will be the public outreach that can be incorporated following the project, using the network.