Wireless Sensor Network to Create a Water Quality Observatory in Coastal Areas

Water is a natural resource necessary for life that must be taken care of. In coastal areas with near agricultural activity, it is very common to detect spills of chemical products that affect water quality of rivers and beaches. This water usually reaches the sea with bad consequences for nature and, therefore, it is important to detect where possible spills are taking place and water does not have enough quality to be used. This paper presents the development of a LoRa (Long Range) based wireless sensor network to create an observatory of water quality in coastal areas. This network consists of wireless nodes endowed with several sensors that allow measuring physical parameters of water quality, such as turbidity, temperature, etc. The data collected by the sensors will be sent to a gateway that will redirect them to a database. The database creates an observatory that will allow monitoring the environment where the network is deployed in real time. Finally, the developed system will be tested in a real environment for its correct start-up. Two different tests will be performed. The first one will check the correct operation of sensors and network architecture; the second test will check the network coverage of the commercial devices.