An intelligent monitoring system for a pig breeding environment based on a wireless sensor network

Abstract

The piggery environment is an important factor affecting health level, growth and development of pigs. To facilitate environmental monitoring for large-scale pig farms, an environmental monitoring system of air quality parameters for livestock breeding is developed based on a wireless sensor network (WSN). As the piggery environment is a multi-variable, non-linear and time-varying system, there are coupling effects among them. Fuzzy controllers are designed to control temperature and humidity, respectively. To reduce the coupling effect, a compensation decoupling controller is designed. Experimental results indicated that, compared with the data from an air quality analyser, measurement precision of temperature, humidity, ammonia and carbon dioxide in a WSN system was higher. Furthermore, the control accuracy of temperature and humidity was also higher. The monitoring system was used in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, China, and it performed well, and it was demonstrated to be suitable for the intelligent monitoring and control in livestock breeding.