2019 International Conference on Vision Towards Emerging Trends in Communication and Networking (ViTECoN)

IoT based Irrigation and Water Logging monitoring

system using Arduino and Cloud Computing
Chandra Prakash Meher
Department of CSE
IIIT Bhubaneswar
Bhubaneswar,India
b115022@iiit-bh.ac.in
Adyasha Sahoo Suraj Sharma
Department of EEE Department of CSE
IIIT Bhubaneswar IIIT Bhubaneswar
Bhubaneswar,India Bhubaneswar,India
b315009@iiit-bh.ac.in suraj@iiit-bh.ac.in

Abstract—In a peninsular country like India, agriculture
contributes about 16% of total GDP, so irrigation system has
been given a high priority in economic development. With the
advancement of wireless sensor network, cloud computing and
IoT in the field of irrigation, this paper aims at conventional
usage of water by providing adequate amount of water to the
crops at the right time and conserving the excess run-off water
from the farmlands. The excess runoff water will be saved in a
tank for future use. As in coastal belts of India there remains
a heavy scarcity of water during the month of March to May
the farmlands remains as barren lands. By using this method,
crop rotation becomes possible, as water will be supplied from
the water stored from run-off water. It aims at automation the
irrigation process by surveillance of soil moisture, humidity
and temperature. Arduino Uno is the micro-controller, which
monitors the sustainability conditions of the crops ensuring
adequate water supply and better crop yield. It also helps the
farmer to control the farmland remaining in far away from that
place also. By using IoT the farmer can also make a predictive
study of the amount of water requirement in the upcoming
days. Humidity sensor, temperature sensor and moisture sensor
are deployed in the peripherals of the field which will sense
the environmental conditions and send those data to an local
wireless server and the recorded data will be stored on cloud.
Keywords—IoT,micro-controller,irrigation system,Water-logging
real-time database,DHT11,Moisture sensor,Cloud
I. I NTRODUCTION
Agriculture plays a vital role in Indian economy. Over 70%
of the rural households depend on agriculture. Indian agricul-
ture sector accounts for 16% of India’s gross domestic product
(GDP) and provides employment to 50% of the countries
workforce. But due to uneven distribution of rainfall in our
country various challenges come in the farming conditions.
During some months of the year there is scarcity of rainfall
as a result of which proper growth of crops gets hampered
which results in loss of some plants in its juvenile stage
itself.And sometimes due to excessive unseasonal rainfall
the crops gets rotten up which creates an environment for
the breeding of various insects. Several manual technologies
had been implemented to tackle the situation but it requires
a lot of man power as a result every time investment is
high.So,automated system will be economical and efficient
way for tackling the problems. Due to uneven distribution
of rainfall, it becomes difficult for a farmer to irrigate the
whole field manually by making efficient use of water,so some
technical irrigation facility is required to efficiently distribute
the water to the whole farm land for better crop production.
India is blessed with a large acreage of land for cultivation but
due to poor irrigation facilities and inadequate water supply its
does not provide a sufficient output for the country’s GDP[1].
The manual method of watering the crops leaves the land
uncultivated due to scarcity of water during arid seasons which
results in decrease of crop retainability. In India,as rice is the
staple food of most of the coastal regions so maximum area of
peninsular part is cultivated with rice but due to lack of proper
irrigation system there is an inadequate crop yield. Also due
to retreating monsoon and unseasonable rainfall water logging
comes into an issue as the result the lands gets logged with
rain water which results in rotting away of crops[2].
In this proposed model, sensors will play the main role in
collecting the data of the atmosphere and using the values
of sensors it will provide an estimated quantity of water
required to the crops according to the environment. Valves
will also play important role providing a pathway for inlet
and outlet of water into the field.Depending on the appropriate
instruction sent by the user the valve will follow the action.
By implementing this technique a huge amount of water can
be saved and excessive watering of plants can be avoided[3].
The humidity, temperature and moisture sensors will deployed
near the peripheral of the crops and the data collected from
it will be sent to the nearest gateway. The gateway then
transfers the data to the cloud where it will be linked to a
database system that will store the recorded data sequentially.
During the installation a predetermined threshold value is set
according to the average climatic condition of the area. If the
sensed value exceeds the threshold value then the Arduino will
send an alert message or notification to the user to perform the
desired action depending on the condition to water the land or
not.
The notification will be sent to the user through the web
app[4]. As soon as the owner performs the desired action
it immediately sends response to the database which in turn
provides request to the Arduino and the valves gets opened up
for the inlet or outlet of water into the fields until the moisture
content receives a threshold value.Thus the surplus outlet water
can be stored to be used during dry season. Hence,water har-
vesting can be done with efficient usage of water The database

978-1-5386-9353-7/19/$31.00 2019
c IEEE
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can be also beneficial in providing precision agriculture data. has power jack , an ICSP header, and a reset button to clear
A detailed study of the sensor values can also predict the yield the memory. It consists of all the things,required by the user.
percent. This can also prove beneficial in suggest the farmer Thus it can be simply connected to the power using AC-to-DC
to put extra manure or fertilizer for meeting its demand. adapter or else using battery to start the board.Thus the table:1
shows the board summary.
II. M AIN PART
TABLE I
A. Challenges of IoT in Agriculture A RDUINO BOARD ’ S S UMMARY
1.Customers Prospective: The final information that is Micro Controller ATMega328
Operating Voltage 5v
collected from the server by detailed study sensors is not Voltage(Input) 7-12 V
properly utilized by the rural based farmers due to lack using Voltage Limit(Input) 6-20 V
high end technology based application. To provide better Clock Speed 16 MHz
reliability on data more emphasis must be given to software SRAM 99.85 kb (ATMega328)
EEPROM 28 kb (ATMega328)
than hardware so the end user must be capable enough Flash Memory 32 KB (ATMega328)
to make the information notable.So there is not sufficient
institutional capacity to deliver farmers specific services[5].

2.Connectivity and Storage: The battery life span of the

module may be limited to an extent so proper inspection is
required every time to avoid the connectivity losses.Sometimes
due to poor signal connection the data may be lost on its
way to the database server so every time it must be ensured
to have a good connectivity signal[6].If there may be any
interruption in the user end application then also the data may
be interrupted resulting in poor decisions. The storage capacity
of the IoT devices has low memory so it cannot hold much of
its capacity.The application used may not have much memory
space to store all the data through out the year thereby creating Fig.2 Arduino UNO
data losses for analysis[7]. nRF24L01: It is small integrated RF transceiver chip of
frequency band of 2.4-2.5 Ghz.The main importance of this
integrated chip is that it posses ShockBrust technology so
that it can also communicate with microprocessor at low
speed . Without activating also it can access FIFO register
both in power-down mode and standby mode, MCU can also
access FIFO register without activation, which also reduces
the average power consumption[8].Thus nRF24L01,Fig.3
wireless module can transmit data even by consuming less
power[9].

Fig.1 Integration of sensor(s) with Arduino UNO.

3.Hardware Specifications: Standards of the devices are im-
portant in order to work on new technologies.If any component
needs to be replaced and if it posses some different standard
then the interoperability creates problem as a result the system
becomes complicated. And the issues with integration as
shown in the Fig.1 arises[5].

B. System Devices
Arduino Uno : The Arduino Uno shown in the Fig.2 is a
development board with ATMega328 micro-controller used in
the broad.It has 14 digital pins which allow user to interface
input / output with the board. Besides that it provide 6 analog
inputs, 16 MHz ceramic resonator, USB connection for data
transfer and power supply from laptops or PCs[13]. Also it
Fig.3 Pin Configuration of nRF24L01
Moisture Sensor : The increase in productivity of the crops,
water is the important source so keeping a track of the amount
of water in the soil is necessary[10]. Soil moisture Fig.4 is
used to measure the water retaining capacity of the soil.The
voltage between two probes of the moisture sensor will

measure dielectric permittivity of the surrounding medium
using a capacitance.In soil, dielectric permittivity is a function
of the water content, and therefore the water content of the
soil is measured. The sensor predicts the water content by
calculating the average over the entire length of the sensor[11].
Fig.4 Soil Moisture Sensor
DHT11-(Humidity and Temperature sensor): It is a digital
compound temperature & humidity sensor that gives a digital
output previously calibrated. It uses a acquisition technology
in digital mode for temperature & humidity sensor technology
in order to have long term stability[9].
This single-chip micro-controller (Fig.5) with a a 8-bit con-
nection provides quick response and better output quality ,thus
makes it cost-effective.A single bus data format acts as both
input/output transmission or two way communication. One
single unit of data is 5 Byte (40 Bit).
The communication time of transmitting and receiving is
maximum 3 ms. The format single unit of output contains
40 bits.
Output format: 16 bit of Humidity(8 bit integer data + 8 bit
decimal data) and 16 bit of Temperature(8 bit integer data
+ 8 bit decimal data) and 8 bit calibration.The calibration is
the sum of the first four bytes[12]. The power consumption is
quite low i.e.,supply voltage of about 5V and the maximum
current(average) of about 0.5 mA .
Fig.5 DHT11 sensor to measure humidity and temp. of the
area
ESP8266: It is a system on chip, highly integrated and
cost effective module with TCP/IP stack which allows micro-
controller to connect to WiFi.The ESP8266 in Fig.6 is efficient
to host an application.The storage and processing capacity
is much higher which helps the module integrate via GPIO
ports of the sensors with least loading during run-time[13].It
has an integrated RF that allows it to work on the operating
condition without any external RF parts. The input voltage
being 3.3 V, with 8 pins, consisting of 1 Transmitter and
3
1 Receiver, 2 General purpose input output pins i.e. GPIO
0 and GPIO 2, Reset , VCC and Ground. ESP has faster
transmission and processing as it handles the information on
both the ways, one as sensor interface unit and other as the
Wireless Communication Unit[14].
Fig:6 ESP8266 Module
III. S YSTEM A RCHITECTURE
Fig:7 IoT Architecture Diagram
In this architecture, shown in the Fig.7 basically three com-
ponents used are Hardware Module,IoT Gateway and Cloud.
These basic components forms the architecture of the pro-
posed model. The Hardware Module contains sensors i.e.
DHT11(for temperature and moisture sensing), Soil moisture
sensor(measuring the moisture contain of the soil).For trans-
mitting the sensor data(s) from micro controller to the gateway
using nRF24L01 (a trans-receiver module).
In the gateway there is a setup of WiFi Module(ESP8266),
a nRF24L01 and a Micro-controller. These elements forms
the core gateway of the system. The gateway sets path of
communication between the transmitter and receiver end.It is
highly authenticated and secured pathway where leakage of
data is least[15].
Finally, the Cloud which plays an decision part in IoT .
Cloud serves as an environment for storage,user interaction,
handling real time database and others analytic work for
project implementation[16]. Use of cloud in the proposed
model will help to analyzed the data from the real time
database i.e Firebase or AWS. Use of these database helps
to build end user applications such as Web app or Mobile
app.
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IV. W ORKING P ROPOSAL

The working proposal as shown in the Fig.8 is based on
the automation in the agriculture.It checks for two major
conditions i.e overflow of water and underflow of water
with other required conditions. As discussed above, the
hardware module (sensors,nRF and MCU) which need to be
setup making a chain of networks among the other hardware
modules in the fields (crop fields). These chains of network
forms a single transmission end from different parts of the
field to the IoT gateway. In the field, sensors with data from
different parts, transmits to their respective MCU(s) and thus
MCU(s) transmits the collected data from sensors to the nRF.
With network protocol nRF from different module forms a
hub to make a single transmission end and hence the final
collected data is being transmitted to the Gateway.
This alert or notification from cloud enable user at the
end point to send command to the hardware to perform
certain action i.e to remove water using pipeline when
overflow of water in the field or to irrigate the field in time
intervals.
Irrigation- The method of supplying of water to the fields at
an interval of time is called Irrigation. In our model, we have
also discussed the process of irrigation in our model to show
the utilization of pipelines and storage of water. Connection of
pipes in the fields and storage tanks serve the major advantage
for irrigation during the hot seasons. In those days when the
crops like legumes and other crops that grow in the fields
require water during the cultivation. In the tropic region, the
sun rays are stronger, which cause plants to die. To overcome
this problem we have used the same model to irrigate the field.

Since the connection of sensors measure the humidity,

temperature and moisture of the soil, which is send to the
server as it did earlier. A notification is send to the user through
server, which enable the user to send back the command to
open up the gates and switch on the motor to fetch water from
tank to the field through pipelines. These enable irrigation
process in the field. On reaching the optimum level the sensor
send back the data to the gateways to stop the motor and closes
the gate to stop the flow of water to the fields.

Fig:8 Working Model

In the Gateway, transmitted data are being received by the
nRF module which works as a receiver. Further these data
are being passed to the MCU which enables WiFi ESP8266
to connect to the provided Cloud (AWS or Firebase). MCU
with the help of ESP8266 connects to the local router and on
successful connection, provides an IP address which contain
the received data. Further the network connects to the cloud
for storing the data and analyzing them.
In the cloud data get stored in the real time database which
provides APIs to access the stored data directly. It also
provide an admin panel for end user interaction with the
hardware and store data. As mention these module works
for certain condition, lets discuss the shortage of water in
field.In the cloud few analysis and prediction models shown
in flowchart Fig.9 are used to set threshold data for different
conditions which would state the requirement of irrigation or
control water logging. Based on the requirements a trigger or
notification will create in the admin panel mentioning as:

”Please switch ON motor for irrigation”

”Please OPEN the pipelines to remove excess water from
field.” Fig.9 Flowchart of proposed model
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V. F UTURE W ORKS
This proposed model can be further extended to include
pH sensor to know the quality and type of soil. Further to
have better cloud management system we can use Firebase
or Amazon Web Services which will provide real time data
as well as analysis of the data. We can use machine learning
approach to predict the amount of water required in further
time span which will prove beneficial for the user.This will
surely prove a new revolution in the field of agriculture that
will increase the productivity.
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VI. C ONCLUSION
The proposed model may definitely be a new era of
technical advancement which would prove the increase in
productivity of the crops.When the things will be set up to
the cloud and the internet of things set up will be successful
then the whole agricultural sector can be digitally able to
handle the field on their requirement basis. The harvesting of
excess run off water helps saving some amount of water for
for the benefit of the farm lands during summer seasons. The
above future works will also prove profitable to add further
new advancements and innovation on agricultural field and
hence increase the GDP contribution of the country.
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