IoT-Enabled Smart Irrigation Using ESP32 and LoRa for Precision Water Management in Connectivity-Limited Regions

In this paper, a new method for irrigation systems in agriculture has been reported. This work aims to design and implement a smart irrigation system based on the ESP32 platform and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies for optimizing water usage management. With the rapid growth of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, where devices are connected and can be controlled through the internet, it is now feasible to design smart irrigation systems based on real-time environmental data to deliver optimal water use with minimal human intervention. In Sahara areas, where communication networks and internet connections are lacking, alternative communication protocols are necessary for data transfer. LoRa technology based on the SX1278 transceiver provides long-range, low-power communication that can achieve multi-kilometer ranges (up to 10–15 km in rural areas) under ideal conditions: line-of-sight, high antenna height, low data rate, and open rural environments between distributed sensor nodes and a central gateway. However, this theoretical range cannot be assumed in practice. Field tests under standard farm deployment conditions (ground-level placement and vegetation interference) showed that the link was lost at approximately 120 m, which validates the system at the scale of a field plot. This project used Arduino (version 2.3.7) software to program the NodeMCU (ESP32) board to link the board with the Blynk cloud application. The project is used to monitor the temperature, humidity, and soil moisture and do the command for the irrigation system, with master and slave cards using LoRa technology as a communication tool to replace communication systems like WiFi or cellular networks in deserted or remote areas, which might not offer sufficient coverage or could be too expensive to build. To address this challenge, this paper presents the design and implementation of a smart irrigation system based on the ESP32 microcontroller and LoRa (SX1278) technology, with the long-term objective of helping in the modernization of traditional agriculture and environmental sustainability. Extending the coverage to larger fields and Sahara areas would require elevated antennas, optimized LoRa parameters (spreading factor and bandwidth), multi-hop relay nodes, or multiple gateways; these strategies are proposed as future work.