Low-Cost Wireless Sensing System for Precision Agriculture Applications in Orchards

Aristotelis C Tagarakis,Remigio Berruto,Dimitrios Kateris,Dionysis Bochtis

doi:10.3390/app11135858

Aristotelis C Tagarakis, Remigio Berruto + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/app11135858

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Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be reliable tools in agricultural management. In this work, a low cost, low power consumption, and simple wireless sensing system dedicated for agricultural environments is presented. The system is applicable to small to medium sized fields, located anywhere with cellular network coverage, even in isolated rural areas. The novelty of the developed system lies in the fact that it uses a dummy device as Coordinator which through simple but advanced programming can receive, process, and send data packets from all End-nodes to the cloud via a 4G cellular network. Furthermore, it is energy independent, using solar energy harvesting panels, making it feasible to operate in remote, isolated fields. A star topology was followed for the sake of simplification, low energy demands and increased network reliability. The developed system was tested and evaluated in laboratory and real field environment with satisfactory operation in terms of independence, and operational reliability concerning packet losses, communication range (>250 m covering fields up to 36 ha), energy autonomy, and uninterrupted operation. The network can support up to seven nodes in a 30 min data acquisition cycle. These results confirmed the potential of this system to serve as a viable option for monitoring environmental, soil, and crop parameters.

Highlights

To enhance the lifetime of the wireless network, the energy consumption should be minimized by using energy harvesting and adjusting the duty cycle [1,19]
Solar energy harvesting panels were used to charge the batteries powering each node of the network
Since the goal of this project was to develop a simple, low cost, and low energy wireless system, dummy devices were selected as the core hardware and great emphasis was given to their programming

Summary

Introduction

Most wireless sensing systems are either powered by small batteries and completely rely on energy efficiency maximization in order to last for acceptable amount of time [1], or require the setup of a logger located at a central position powered by an electricity distribution network. This is not a viable option for agricultural applications, since the possibility of connecting to a power line in the field is extremely limited

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