A mobile based communication solution for monitoring remote agricultural locations

Abstract

In this paper a method for the effective transmission of data, from a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) in a remote agricultural location with limited connectivity, is proposed; along with a meaningful visualisation of the data at the user end to help in decision making and control of the irrigation system. The paper encompasses three main segments which are data compression, checking for network availability, and user interface. First data compression is implemented to reduce the amount of transmitted data, due to limited connectivity in the area, which is translated in low data rate and high cost of sending the data. Four different techniques are compared: Huffman encoding, Lempel-Ziv-Welsh (LZW), differential encoding, and Run Length Encoding (RLE) to carry out data compression, where Huffman encoding showed the best results when combined with differential encoding. The second phase is the handling of poor network conditions in the agricultural plant by switching between two different communication modes: Mobile data and Short Message Service (SMS). Lastly, the user monitoring centre which is a mobile application that allows the user to monitor and control the agricultural plant remotely. It includes mapping and visualization of temperature and soil moisture data and a control system to control the irrigation system. The solution presents a low-cost alternative for start-up agricultural projects in third world countries, where network instability is an issue and off-the-shelf expensive solutions are not a viable option.