The network will be rolled out across 1 million acres in New South Wales which will encompass dry land crops, horticulture and livestock and a number of rural towns. Within 18 months, the joint venture partners intend to extend across vast areas of the nation’s farming regions.
The Long Range Wide Area Network will provide the backbone infrastructure for secure, standards-based, shared networks of low-cost wireless sensors that will constantly report on essential farm metrics like soil moisture, rainfall, crop health, water levels and livestock data. A key capability of LoRaWAN is the extremely low power consumption and the flexibility to support bi-directional communication and multicast functionality which enable farmers to communicate with sensors on an individual and group level.