This paper proposes an integrated method for the estimation of soil moisture in potato crops that uses a low-cost wireless sensor network (WSN). Soil moisture estimation maps were created by applying the Kriging technique over a WSN composed of nodes. Our goal is to estimate the soil moisture of the crop with a small-scale WSN. Using a perfect mesh approach on a potato crop, experimental results demonstrated that 25 WSN nodes were optimal and sufficient for soil moisture characterization, achieving estimations errors . We provide a strategy to select the number of nodes to use in a WSN, to characterize the moisture behavior for spatio-temporal analysis of soil moisture in the crop. Finally, the implementation cost of this strategy is shown, considering the number of nodes and the corresponding margin of error.
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