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Wireless Sensor Network Applica- tion for Precision Agriculture

Article in Research Today · April 2020

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Biotica H o w t o c i t e t h i s a r t i c l e?
Joshi et al., 2020. Wireless sensor network application
Research for precision agriculture. Research Today 2(5): 125-128.

Today
125 A bstrac t
Vol 2:5 128
T
o accommodate the large global population and to combat

2020 with the alarming climate change and scarcity of water, the
modern day farming demands new and improved methods,
technologies and solutions for modern agricultural fields to enhance

Wireless Sensor
productivity. Consequently, the need for automation and intelligent
decision making is becoming more important to accomplish this
mission. This article outlines the recent applications of wireless sen-

Network Applica- sor networks (WSN’s) in precision agriculture research to improve

agricultural quality including the provision of adequate nutrients

tion for Precision

for crops and the wastage of pesticides for the effective control of
weeds, pests, and diseases. An intelligent and smart WSN system can
collect and process large amount of data from the beginning of the

Agriculture monitoring and manage air quality, soil conditions, to weather situ-
ations and in many other applications such as military, health care,
industrial this technology is also applicable. These approaches may
Ekta Joshi*, Deep Singh Sasode, Neelam also increase the number of opportunities for processing Internet
Singh and Namrata Chouhan of Things (IoT) data.

Dept. of Agronomy, College of Agriculture, RVSKVV, Introduction

F
Gwalior-(474 002) (MP), India
or enhancing agricultural productivity, improving natural
resources, competitiveness, and better rural growth
in agriculture domain, technologies such as cloud
computing, wireless ad-hoc and sensor networks, Internet
of Things (IoT), Radio Frequency Identifier (RFID), satellite
monitoring, are becoming increasingly popular now a days.
Among all these technologies, the agriculture domain is
Open Access mostly explored concerning the application of wireless sensor
networks (WSNs) in improving the traditional methods of
Corresponding Author
farming. The self-organized together with ubiquitous nature,
Ekta Joshi small sized nodes, scalable and cost-effective technology,
e-mail:joshi.ekta86@gmail.com enables the WSNs as a potential tool towards the goal of
automation in agriculture. In this regard, precision agriculture,
Key wo r d s smart irrigation system, optimization of plant growth,
Internet of Things, Precision agriculture, Wireless sensor farmland monitoring, smart fertilization system, greenhouse
network. gases monitoring, smart pest control and disease monitoring
system, agricultural production process management and
security in crops, are a few potential applications. However,
WSNs have few limitations such as limited computation
capability, low battery power and small memory of the sensor
nodes invites challenges in the design of this technology in
Article History agriculture.
Received in 24th April 2020
Received in revised form 25th April 2020 In the Indian scenario, to fulfil the demand of food-grain for
Accepted in final form 26th April 2020 the increasing population, the WSN-based farming solutions
need to be of very low cost to be affordable by end users. As,
India is one of the largest exporters of food grains, and thus,
researchers demand to boost production by incorporating
advanced technologies. Consequently, new and modern
E-mail: bioticapublications@gmail.com technologies comprises of WSNs, General Packet Radio Service

© 2020 125
Joshi et al., 2020

(GPRS), Global Positioning System (GPS), remote sensing, and 2. Farming systems monitoring

C
Geographical Information System (GIS) application are being urrently, various improved systems and devices are
considered in many agricultural applications to achieve the used in farming. In this regard, an improved system to
target. manage these devices eases the overall operation, and
enables automation in faming. Also, such remote monitoring
systems help towards enabling improved management in
large agricultural fields. Further, with the input of additional
information such as satellite images and weather forecasts,
the system performance can be improved.
3. Smart Pest control and disease monitoring system

C
ontrolled usage of pesticides and fertilizers helps
increasing the crop quality as well as minimizing the
farming cost. However, for controlling the usage of
pesticides, we need to monitor the probability and occurrence
of pests in crops. To predict this, we also need the surrounding
climate information such as temperature, humidity and wind
speed. A WSN can autonomously monitor and predict these
Figure 1: A typical wireless sensor network deployed for events over a field of interest.
4. Smart fertilization system

P
agricultural applications.
lant growth and crop quality directly depend on the
Potential applications of WSN in use of fertilizers. However, optimal supply of fertilizers
Agriculture to proper places in fields is a challenging task. The use

I
of fertilizers for farming may be controlled by monitoring the
n agriculture, most of the WSN-based applications are. The variation in soil nutritions such as Nitrogen (N), Phosphorous
performance of an existing WSN-based application can be (P), Potassium (K), and pH. Consequently, soil nutrition
improved to monitor more parameters by only including balance may also be achieved and hence, crop production
additional sensor nodes to the existing architecture. For an quality is also maintained. Gonçalves et al. (2015) studied
example for irrigation scheduling with WSNs with use of soil the effectiveness of mobile nodes to improve agricultural
moisture sensors the soil moisture and weather conditions productivity in a smart system with precision sprays.
regarding parameters needs to be gathered. WSNs for
5. Cattle movement monitoring

A
environmental condition monitoring gather the information of
soil nutrients applied for predicting crop health and production herd of cattle grazing a field can be monitored using
quality over time. The issues present in such applications WSN technology or Radio Frequency Identifier
are the determination of optimal deployment strategy, (RFID). Thus, real-time monitoring of any cattle is also
measurement interval, energy-efficient medium access and achieved. This technology can be implemented further to
routing protocols. For example, if the field area is separated by monitor whether any cattle is moving near the vegetation
obstructions then it will lead to attenuation of signal, thereby fields or not.
affecting the inter-node communication. Contrary, a sparse 6. Ground water quality monitoring

T
deployment of nodes with a long data collection interval is
helpful for enhancing the lifetime of a network. he increased use of fertilizers and pesticides lead to
decrease in the quality of ground water. Placing sensor
Here listed the possible agricultural and farming applications nodes empowered with wireless communication help
which can be implemented using WSNs. in monitoring the water quality.
1. Smart irrigation system

M
7. Greenhouse gases monitoring

F
odern day agriculture requires an improved irrigation
or greenhouse gases emission monitoring the
management system to optimize the water usage
development of a system of solar powered Unmanned
in farming. The alarming reduction of ground
Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and WSN to monitor greenhouse
water level is another motivation for the requirement of an
gases – CH4 and CO2 is beingused in WSN.
advanced system. In this context, micro-irrigation techniques
8. Asset tracking

W
are cost-effective and water-usage efficient. However, micro-
irrigation efficiency can be further improved based on the ireless technology enabled farming equipments
environmental and soil information. In this regard, WSNs are attract the possibility of remote tracking of these
applied as the coordinating technology. assets. A farmer can track the position of the

© 2020 126
Research Today 2020, 2(5):125-128

farming vehicles and irrigation systems from his home. of this technology are its ubiquitous nature, and therefore, it
9. Remote control and diagnosis is suitable for use in multi-tier agricultural applications.

W
d) GPRS/3G/4G

G
ith the advent of internet of things, remote control
and diagnosis of farm equipments such as pumps, PRS (General Packet Radio Service) is a packet data
lights, heaters, valves in machinery are also possible. service for GSM based cellular phones. However, it is
10. Climate monitoring better suited for the periodic monitoring applications

C limate change have brought many effects such as than to the real-time tracking-type applications.
breaking of sea ice, heat waves, glazier melting and lake e) WiMAX

W
temperature warming. Thus, there is a need to control iMAX is the acronym for Worldwide Interoperability
and monitor the climate change. Flood prediction is another
for Microwave Access, a wireless communication.
example of climate monitoring, where wireless sensors can
The long range support together with high speed
be used to detect rainfall and water levels to trigger an alarm
communication features place WiMAX as the best suitable
system.
technology for agricultural applications involving asset
11. Forest Monitoring

F
monitoring such as farming system monitoring, crop-area
orests are important sources for biodiversity and border monitoring, and real-time diagnostics such as remote
ecological balance. Currently, the forest has been controlling of water pumps, lights, gates, remote diagnosis
interrupted by unethical activities such as illegal logging of farming systems.
and development activities. Therefore, it is very important to
f) Wireless sensor nodes

F
implement an effective forest monitoring system. The forest
monitoring system also includes fire monitoring and detection or better classification, we divide these sensors in
in forests. three main categories soil, environment, and plant
related. The soil related sensors along with different
Technologies and Standards Used in soil related measurement parameters such as soil moisture,
rain/water flow, water level, soil temperature, conductivity
Agriculture

I
and salinity sensors are suitable for different potential
n agriculture different wireless sensor nodes and agricultural applications. The environment related sensors
communication technologies are available in the market such as humidity, ambient temperature, rainfall, wind speed
for use in all agriculture operations. and solar radiation are deployed with the application-specific
a) ZigBee soil and plant sensors in various agricultural applications. Third

Z igBee wireless communication technology being one the plant related sensors such as moisture, temperature,
energy-efficient, low cost and reliable, is preferred for hydrogen, wetness, CO2 and photosynthesis are deployed
WSN-based applications in the agricultural and farming or attached to a plant are also an integral part of modern
domains. ZigBee also supports short-distance (10–20 m) data farming applications. Terms of potential developed between
communication over multi-tier, decentralized, ad-hoc and the measuring electrode and reference electrode.
mesh networks. This is suitable for agricultural applications
such as irrigation management, pesticide and fertilizer control,
water quality management, where periodic information
update is required.
b) WiFi

W iFi is a wireless local area network (WLAN) standard

for information exchange or connecting to the
Internet wirelessly. Currently, it is the most widely
used wireless technology found in devices ranging from smart
Figure 2: Block diagram of sensor node

phones and tablets to desktops and laptops. WiFi provides a Conclusion

W
decent communication range in the order of 20 m (indoor) to
SN is emerging technology and have wide range
100 m (outdoor). In agricultural applications, WiFi broadens
the use of heterogeneous architectures connecting multiple of applications. The application of wireless sensor
type of devices over an ad-hoc network. networks to measure the soil parameters and
suitably adapt the Irrigation scheduling technique and soil
c) Bluetooth

B
management schemes helps to save a significant amount of
luetooth is a low power, low cost wireless technology water under water scarce situations. The WSN-based farming
used for communication between portable devices and solutions need to be modified by adding new sensors and to
desktops over a short range (8–10 m). The advantages be of very low cost to be affordable by end users in India, to

© 2020 127
 Joshi et al., 2020

fulfil the demand of food-grain for the increasing population. Ojha, T., Misrha, S., Raghuwanshi, N.S. 2015. Wireless sensor
The inclusion of WSNs will revolutionize the Indian agriculture networks for agriculture: The state-of-the-art in practice
for advancing the agricultural and farming industries by and future challenges. Computers and Electronics in
introducing new dimensions. Agriculture 118, 66-84.
References Shafi, U., Mumtaz, R., Garcia, N., Jose, H., Syed, A., Zaidi, R.,
Iqbal, N., 2019. Precision Agriculture Techniques and
Banu, S., 2015. Precision Agriculture: Tomorrow’s Technology Practices: From Considerations to Applications. Sensors
for Today’s Farmer. J Food Process Technol 6: 468. 19, 3796.
doi:10.4172/2157-7110.1000468.

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