Prototype Model Design of Automatic Irrigation Controller

Abstract

Irrigation forms one of the primary components of agriculture and food production. Due to outdated techniques in developing and underdeveloped countries, a huge volume of water is wasted in this process. In this article, we have devised a fuzzy rule-base irrigation controller prototype to put a check on this water wastage by providing an optimal irrigating environment for farming. The prototype smart automatic irrigation controller (SAIC) has two operational units, namely, wireless sensor unit (WSU) and wireless information processing unit (WIPU). The purpose of the WSU is to measure weather and soil conditions and calculate the actual water loss due to evapotranspiration. The WIPU processes this calculated value and performs the necessary control action to regulate the actuators supplying the right amount of water to the farm. An exhaustive rule-base combination model is stacked in the lookup table for decision making. The prototype model is first simulated and then validated in the field for checking the performance efficiency. The simulated results showed capabilities to compensate for water loss by almost 100%. The controller achieved a 27% reduction in water usage and a 40% increase in crop yield. The prototype is connected to a cloud server for data repository and remote access and control. The device is efficient, low cost, and user friendly so that the end-users can it with ease and comfort. The model is innovative and unique in the sense that it can the irrigation scheduling for all types of crops, across all climatic conditions for all soil types upon feeding the proper soil-crop-growth stage combinations in the inference engine.