Abstract
The technology development in wireless sensor network (WSN) offers a sustainable solution towards precision agriculture (PA) in greenhouses. It helps to effectively use the agricultural resources and management tools and monitors different parameters to attain better quality yield and production. WSN makes use of Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs), a wireless technology to transmit data over long distances with minimal power consumption. LoRaWAN is one of the most successful LPWAN technologies despite its low data rate and because of its low deployment and management costs. Greenhouses are susceptible to different types of interference and diversification, demanding an improved WSN design scheme. In this paper, we contemplate the viable challenges for PA in greenhouses and propose the successive steps essential for effectual WSN deployment and facilitation. We performed a real-time, end-to-end deployment of a LoRaWAN-based sensor network in a greenhouse of the ’Proefcentrum Hoogstraten’ research center in Belgium. We have designed a dashboard for better visualization and analysis of the data, analyzed the power consumption for the LoRaWAN communication, and tried three different enclosure types (commercial, simple box and airflow box, respectively). We validated the implications of real-word challenges on the end-to-end deployment and air circulation for the correct sensor readings. We found that temperature and humidity have a larger impact on the sensor readings inside the greenhouse than we initially thought, which we successfully solved through the airflow box design.
Highlights
Wireless sensor network (WSN) technology has rapidly evolved over the years enabling a spectrum of applications such as military, industry, agriculture and healthcare [1]
We mainly looked into energy-efficient IoT strategies for precision agriculture in greenhouse
We have summarized the prospects and challenges for precision agriculture in greenhouse and discussed the implication of sensor box design scheme over sensor readings
Summary
Wireless sensor network (WSN) technology has rapidly evolved over the years enabling a spectrum of applications such as military, industry, agriculture and healthcare [1]. WSNs provide a cost-effective approach for PA in greenhouses [10] Different applications such as climate monitoring, irrigation planning, feeding recommended nutrition and forecasting crop health require a diversified control system with a wide range of sensing capabilities. This paper describes the development and deployment of the LoRaWAN network to monitor environmental conditions in a greenhouse This system is deployed at the research center Hoogstraten, which is in the north of the province of Antwerp, Belgium. Deployed sensor network monitors environmental parameters such as temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide (CO2 ), electrical conductivity (EC) and illuminance These sensors are battery operated and use private LoRaWAN network to forward the data to a gateway that is installed at the research center.
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