Wireless Sensor Networking for Rain-fed Farming Decision Support

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be a valuable decision- support tool for farmers. This motivated our deployment of a WSN system to support rain-fed agriculture in India. We defined promising use cases and resolved technical challenges throughout a two-year deployment of our COMMON- Sense Net system, which provided farmers with environment data. However, the direct use of this technology in the field did not foster the expected participation of the population. This made it difficult to develop the intended decision-support system. Based on this experience, we take the following position in this paper: currently, the deployment of WSN technology in developing regions is more likely to be effective if it targets scientists and technical personnel as users, rather than the farmers themselves. We base this claim on the lessons learned from the COMMON-Sense system deployment and the results of an extensive user experiment with agriculture scientists, which we describe in this paper

The impact of agricultural activities on water quality: a case for collaborative catchment-scale management using integrated wireless sensor networks

The challenge of improving water quality is a growing global concern, typified by the European Commission Water Framework Directive and the United States Clean Water Act. The main drivers of poor water quality are economics, poor water management, agricultural practices and urban development. This paper reviews the extensive role of non-point sources, in particular the outdated agricultural practices, with respect to nutrient and contaminant contributions. Water quality monitoring (WQM) is currently undertaken through a number of data acquisition methods from grab sampling to satellite based remote sensing of water bodies. Based on the surveyed sampling methods and their numerous limitations, it is proposed that wireless sensor networks (WSNs), despite their own limitations, are still very attractive and effective for real-time spatio-temporal data collection for WQM applications. WSNs have been employed for WQM of surface and ground water and catchments, and have been fundamental in advancing the knowledge of contaminants trends through their high resolution observations. However, these applications have yet to explore the implementation and impact of this technology for management and control decisions, to minimize and prevent individual stakeholder’s contributions, in an autonomous and dynamic manner. Here, the potential of WSN-controlled agricultural activities and different environmental compartments for integrated water quality management is presented and limitations of WSN in agriculture and WQM are identified. Finally, a case for collaborative networks at catchment scale is proposed for enabling cooperation among individually networked activities/stakeholders (farming activities, water bodies) for integrated water quality monitoring, control and management

Utilization of Internet of Things and wireless sensor networks for sustainable smallholder agriculture

Agriculture is the economy’s backbone for most developing countries. Most of these countries suffer from insufficient agricultural production. The availability of real-time, reliable and farm-specific information may significantly contribute to more sufficient and sustained production. Typically, such information is usually fragmented and often does fit one-on-one with the farm or farm plot. Automated, precise and affordable data collection and dissemination tools are vital to bring such information to these levels. The tools must address details of spatial and temporal variability. The Internet of Things (IoT) and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are useful technology in this respect. This paper investigates the usability of IoT and WSN for smallholder agriculture applications. An in-depth qualitative and quantitative analysis of relevant work over the past decade was conducted. We explore the type and purpose of agricultural parameters, study and describe available resources, needed skills and technological requirements that allow sustained deployment of IoT and WSN technology. Our findings reveal significant gaps in utilization of the technology in the context of smallholder farm practices caused by social, economic, infrastructural and technological barriers. We also identify a significant future opportunity to design and implement affordable and reliable data acquisition tools and frameworks, with a possible integration of citizen science

Ag-IoT for crop and environment monitoring: Past, present, and future

CONTEXT: Automated monitoring of the soil-plant-atmospheric continuum at a high spatiotemporal resolution is a key to transform the labor-intensive, experience-based decision making to an automatic, data-driven approach in agricultural production. Growers could make better management decisions by leveraging the real-time field data while researchers could utilize these data to answer key scientific questions. Traditionally, data collection in agricultural fields, which largely relies on human labor, can only generate limited numbers of data points with low resolution and accuracy. During the last two decades, crop monitoring has drastically evolved with the advancement of modern sensing technologies. Most importantly, the introduction of IoT (Internet of Things) into crop, soil, and microclimate sensing has transformed crop monitoring into a quantitative and data-driven work from a qualitative and experience-based task. OBJECTIVE: Ag-IoT systems enable a data pipeline for modern agriculture that includes data collection, transmission, storage, visualization, analysis, and decision-making. This review serves as a technical guide for Ag-IoT system design and development for crop, soil, and microclimate monitoring. METHODS: It highlighted Ag-IoT platforms presented in 115 academic publications between 2011 and 2021 worldwide. These publications were analyzed based on the types of sensors and actuators used, main control boards, types of farming, crops observed, communication technologies and protocols, power supplies, and energy storage used in Ag-IoT platforms

무선 통신 기반의 스마트 관개 모니터링 시스템

학위논문 (석사) -- 서울대학교 대학원 : 공과대학 기계공학부, 2020. 8. 안성훈.농업은 개발 도상국들의 경제적 중추임에도 불구하고 대부분의 개발 도상국에서는 자동화된 장비나 데이터 모니터링 등의 지능형 시스템이 거의 적용되지 못한 상태에서 인력에 의해 농업의 모든 과정을 수행하고 있다. 관개는 농작물의 생산성에 결정적 영향을 미치는 필수적인 농업 공정중 하나로서, 연중 강우량의 변동에 대한 대응을 위하여 대부분의 농촌지역에는 농업용수 관개 시스템의 구축을 위해 노력하고 있다. 하지만, 이러한 인력에 의한 농업 방법에서의 관개 시스템은 스마트 센서를 이용한 모니터링 및 제어 등의 기술적 요소가 적용되지 못하여 효율적인 수자원의 활용이 제한되고 이로 인해 농작물의 생산성 또한 낮은 실정이다. 본 논문에서는 개발 도상국의 농촌 지역에서 적용 가능한 무선통신(RF: Radio Frequency) 기반의 스마트 관개 모니터링 시스템 및 요금 선불 시스템을 제안한다. 본 연구는 탄자니아 아루샤(Arusha) 지역의 응구루도토(Ngurudoto) 마을을 대상으로 수행되었다. 본 연구에서 제안하는 시스템은 기상 데이터와 토양 수분 데이터를 하이브리드로 분석하여 농업 용수의 소요를 모니터링한다. 하드웨어 시스템은 기상 측정 컨트롤러, 토양 수분 센서, 수류 센서, 솔레노이드 밸브 및 요금 선불 시스템 등으로 구성된다. 시스템의 각 센서는 무선 통신을 통해 서버로 수집된 데이터를 전송하도록 구축되었는데, 이러한 무선 통신 시스템 아키텍처는 인터넷의 운용이 제한되는 네트워크 오지 지역에 적합하도록 설계되었다. 수집된 데이터에 대한 분석 및 예측은 데이터 분석 알고리즘을 통해 수행되는데, 이를 통하여 농장에 용수를 공급할 시기 및 수량과 함께 요구되는 전력량이 자동으로 판단된다. 한편, 선불시스템은 데이터 분석 결과에 기반하여 용수 사용자가 용수를 공급받기 전에 비용을 우선 지불하도록 개발되었다. 본 시스템의 모든 센서에서 수집된 정보는 실시간으로 모니터링되도록 그래픽 기반의 사용자 인터페이스를 활용하여 정보를 제공한다. 본 연구를 통하여 개발된 무선 통신 기반 스마트 관개 모니터링 시스템은 사용자 중심의 편의성과 경제적인 관개 및 모니터링 시스템을 제공하여 개발 도상국의 경제적 기반인 농업 분야의 발전에 긍정적인 영향을 미칠것으로 기대한다.Agriculture is the backbone of the economy of most developing countries. In these countries, agriculture or farming is mostly done manually with little integration of machinery, intelligent systems and data monitoring. Irrigation is an essential process that influences crop production. The fluctuating amount of rainfall per year has led to the adaption of irrigation systems in most farms. This manual type of farming has proved to yield fair results, however, due to the absence of smart sensors monitoring methods and control, it has failed to be a better type of farming and thus leading to low harvests and draining water sources. In this paper, we introduce an RF (Radio Frequency) based Smart Irrigation Meter System and a water prepayment system in rural areas of Tanzania. Specifically, Ngurudoto area in Arusha region where it will be used as a case study for data collection. The proposed system is hybrid, comprising of both weather data (evapotranspiration) and soil moisture data. The architecture of the system has on-site weather measurement controllers, soil moisture sensors buried on the ground, water flow sensors, solenoid valve, and a prepayment system. These sensors send data to the server through wireless RF based communication architecture, which is suitable for areas where the internet is not reliable and, it is interpreted and decisions and predictions are made on the data by our data analysis algorithm. The decisions made are, when to automatically irrigate a farm and the amount of water and the power needed. Then, the user has to pay first before being supplied with water. All these sensors and water usage are monitored in real time and displaying the information on a custom built graphical user interface. The RF-based smart irrigation monitoring system has both economical and social impact on the developing countries' societies by introducing a convenient and affordable means of Irrigation system and autonomous monitoring.Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Background of the study and Literature review 3 1.1.Purpose of Research 17 Chapter 3. Requirements and System Design 21 3.1. Key Components 21 3.1.1. System Architecture 21 3.1.2. The Smart Irrigation Meter 22 3.1.2. Parts of Smart Irrigation Meter 23 3.1.3. The pre-paid system and the monitoring device 26 3.2. The Monitoring Application and Cloud Server. 27 Chapter 4. Experiment Setup 30 4.1. Testing Location 30 4.2. Hardware & Software Setup 31 Chapter 5 Results and Analysis 36 5.1 Optimization and anomaly detection algorithm 36 5.1.1 Dynamic Regression Model 36 5.1.2 Nave classifier algorithm for anomaly detection. 38 Chapter 6. Conclusion 44 References 46 초 록 49Maste

Human Centered Design for Development

This paper describes the challenges faced in ICTD by reviewing the lessons learned from a project geared at improving the livelihood of marginal farmers in India through wireless sensor networks. Insufficient user participation, lack of attention to user needs, and a primary focus on technology in the design process led to unconvinced target users who were not interested in the new technology. The authors discuss benefits that ICTD can reap from incorporating human-centered design (HCD) principles such as holistic user involvement and prototypes to get buy-in from target users and foster support from other stakeholders and NGOs. The study’s findings suggest that HCD artifacts can act as boundary objects for the different internal and external actors in development projects

Study of the development of an Io T-based sensor platform for e-agriculture

E-agriculture, sometimes reffered as 'ICT in agriculture' (Information and Communication technologies) or simply "smart agriculture", is a relatively recent and emerging field focused on the enhacement on agricultural and rural development through improved information and communication processes. This concept, involves the design, development, evaluation and application of innovative ways to use IoT technologies in the rural domain, with a primary focus on agriculture, in order to achieve better ways of growing food for the masses with sustainability. In IoT-based agriculture, platforms are built for monitoring the crop field with the help of sensors (light, humidity, temperature, soil moisture, etc.) and automating the irrigation system. The farmers can monitor the field conditions from anywhere and highly more efficient compared to conventional approaches

Crop Management with the IoT: an Interdisciplinary Survey

In this study we analyze how crop management is going to benefit from the Internet of Things providing an overview of its architecture and components from an agronomic and a technological perspective. The present analysis highlights that IoT is a mature enabling technology, with articulated hardware and software components. Cheap networked devices may sense crop fields at a finer grain, to give timeliness warnings on stress conditions and the presence of disease to a wider range of farmers. Cloud computing allows to reliably store and access heterogeneous data, developing and deploy farm services. From this study emerges that IoT is also going to increase attention to sensor quality and placement protocol, while Machine Learning should be oriented to produce understandable knowledge, which is also useful to enhance Cropping System Simulation systems