Communication strategies for low cost environmental monitoring in Uganda. Case study: GSM vs LoRaWAN.

Abstract

The project analyzed two communication strategies used to relay data from environment monitoring devices. The technologies studied were Global Systems for Mobile communication (GSM) and Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN). These two were analyzed by setting up a circuit which had a BME280 sensor, sending temperature and humidity data using both technologies to an SQLite database that was hosted on a Google cloud server and were displayed using a web application. Results showed that GSM incurs more running costs despite less initial costs than LoRaWAN. This implies that there is need for LoRaWAN to be embraced despite the popularity of GSM in Uganda, as it consumes low power and still supports long range communication for data transfer in environmental monitoring systems.