Feasibility study on application of GSM–SMS technology to field data acquisition

Abstract

This paper presents a feasibility study on GSM–SMS technology application to field data acquisition. This feasibility study is based on a field data collection prototype system that is composed of field monitoring and host control platforms. The data transmission, communication, and control of these two platforms are accomplished using GSM–SMS technology. Based on the transmission characteristics and capacity of short message, this paper proposes a GSM–SMS based communication architecture and then develops a package format of short message that is suitable for monitoring the farming area and collecting field data, such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, and pest/insect captured numbers. After establishing the prototype system, the authentication and performance tests were conducted. The authentication test shows that the field data were transmitted correctly. Based on the performance testing results on over 915 data transmissions, the one-way SMS transmission time for a field monitoring platform to a host control platform is about 10–15 s, while the average transmission time of a field monitoring platform response to host control command is 30.5 s. Considering fluctuation of the environmental parameters, these delays are within tolerant boundaries. Also, the correctness of field data collected using GSM–SMS was 100% based on cross checking the sent and received data, and the integrity of transmission is guaranteed. The rate of data loss achieved can be lowered to 0.66%, which mainly depends on the service quality of the commercial telecommunication company. The proposed technique is well suited for implementation in field data monitoring and acquisition for precision agriculture.