A LoRaWAN network infrastructure for the remote monitoring of offshore sea farms

Fish farming is nowadays a crucial sector for food industry all around the world. While the total amount of captured fish production has remained almost constant in the last 30 years (around 90 millions tonnes according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United States), in the same span of time the quantity of bred fish has increased tenfold, almost reaching the quantity of the captured one. What was once little more than a hand-crafted production, is now an actual industrial sector, employing around 60 million workers all around the world. Like all industrial sectors, aquaculture can considerably benefit by the introduction of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, thus adopting them within the context of Industry 4.0 to optimize fish farming processes. In this context, this paper proposes a real-time monitoring infrastructure based on the use of Fixed Nodes and Mobile Sinks for the remote, real-time control of offshore sea farms. The proposed architecture exploits a LoRaWAN network infrastructure for data transmission: different configurations are tested on the field, proving the reliability of the communication channel in a worst case scenario up to a 8.33 km offshore distance. A complete real-time monitoring system is presented, allowing to measure in real time several parameters about the quality of water in the fish cages as well as their maintenance status.