I am working on a UAV assistend IoT data collection project for precision agriculture. The sensor end-nodes with LoRa connectivity will be buried underground. The gateware will be mounted on a drone. So the weight of the grateway is important. Could anyone please suggest a light-weight gateway that works with The Things Stack V3. Many thanks,
What is the durability of the drone when on station? LoRaWAN, especially implemented on TTN (as a community deployment) is not great use for a mobile (as in continuously moving) GW - though there are some instances where it has proved useful (Transport logistics - rail, maritime, or possibly Utilities - drive-by AMR as adjunct and gap fill for fixed LoRaWAN GW infrastructure to cost effectively capture the last last few % of meter nodes not heard by the fixed location GW’s., etc. In each case these are typically private deployments, not community) - one that is inplace for an extended period before relocating and then being in place for a significant time is another matter (e.g. a test GW deployed to check coverage and carry out site surveys and maybe move around over hours and days before effecting a permanent deployment. The issue being your drone GW may literally ‘pop-up’ for a short time, nodes in the area start to feed data through it and adapt to the new network ‘densification’ and e.g. adjust their own transmissions under ADR, then your Drone departs and renders these nodes ineffective as possibly no longer heard by their original GW’s…i.e. short duration GW deployments can be disruptive to other users and potentially implements DoS for other users. If your drone can stay on station for weeks at a time (solar powered?) then maybe! Otherwise not a good use case…
A Gateway at a resonable altitude could have quite a large coverage footprint.
If such a Gateway was permanently in place, then that is a good thing.
However if its only available for a short period it could attract connections from other nodes at considerable distances. Which could be disruptive when the Gateway is no longer there.
On the basis that you use a private TTS or OS instance, a stripped down TTIG is a contender.
If you put it on TTN, as stated above but bears repeating, it will be HUGELY disruptive to a large number of devices for a large area.
Sounds like a good use case for a tethered balloon or a kite. That would increase time on station and increase coverage by altitude and maybe even supplying power along the tether. And it would keep it quasi in-place.
As far as I can remember, there was a thread on this forum about tracking animals with a car mounted gateway driving along a highway that shared some of the traits and problems of this case (ADR, knowing when to send, …)
Thank you so much for the suggestions. I will try to prepare a private network for the mobile gateway.