Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences xxx (2018) xxx–xxx

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Journal of King Saud University –

Computer and Information Sciences
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Variable sampling interval for energy-efficient heterogeneous precision

agriculture using Wireless Sensor Networks
Yousef Hamouda ⇑, Mohammed Msallam
Department of Computer Science, Al-Aqsa University, P.O. Box 4051, Gaza, Palestine

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This study aims to examine the problem of sampling interval selection for the precision agriculture using
Received 8 February 2018 Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). The Wireless Sensor Networks is introduced for limited energy sensor
Revised 18 April 2018 nodes and deployed in an agricultural farm, which is divided into a number of heterogeneous agricultural
Accepted 19 April 2018
areas. A Variable Sampling Interval Precision Agriculture (VSI-PA) system is proposed to measure and
Available online xxxx
monitor the agricultural parameters for appropriate agricultural activities e.g. water irrigation. At every
time step, the sensor nodes are selected for each area to sense the soil moisture and temperature. After
Keywords:
that, a variable sampling interval is calculated independently for each individual area, according to the
Variable sampling interval
Energy-efficient
soil temperature of the area. Analysis of simulation results show that, compared with other fixed sam-
Irrigation system pling interval schemes, the proposed VSI-PA system provides a significant improvement in energy con-
Precision agriculture sumption while maintaining a small variation of the soil moisture regardless of the values of soil
Wireless sensor networks temperature. Therefore, the crop yields have been enhanced.
Ó 2018 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an
open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction of applying PA inputs (i.e. farming parameters and resources) at

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have become an emerging
phenomenon in industry, both for civil and military purposes. They
consist of hundreds or thousands of tiny sensor nodes, connected
to each other via wireless communication protocols (Wieselthier
et al., 2002; Potdar et al., 2009). The sensor nodes cooperate
(Zhao et al., 2003), together to sense, compute, and transmit the
information from harsh physical environments to external base
station or sink. Nowadays, commercial and industrial fields employ
WSNs for a wide range of applications, such as healthcare, target
tracking, environmental monitoring, weather monitoring, decision
support systems, inventory control, wildlife habitat monitoring,
smart homes, bio-chemical material detection, disaster manage-
ment, surveillance, and agriculture (Arampatzis et al., 2005).
WSNs have been recently employed in modern agriculture and
farming. Precision Agriculture (PA) refers to automation in agricul-
ture using information technology. PA is defined as the techniques
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: ye.hamouda@alaqsa.edu.ps (Y. Hamouda).
Peer review under responsibility of King Saud University.
Production and hosting by Elsevier
the right location and time to optimize the farming production,
improve the resource utilization, provide online monitoring,
reduce the agriculture cost, and reduce the human power which
is subjected to minimizing the environmental impact (Crary
et al., 1990; Leea et al., 2010; Paek et al., 2014). Farming parame-
ters and resources include site-specific application of water, fertil-
izer doses, pesticide, soil moisture, herbicides, and air temperature
(Adam et al., 2000). Thus, WSNs are employed in PA to monitor,
optimize, and measure different farming and sowing parameters
and resources to take the appropriate action (Lee, 1998; Yazdi
et al., 2000). One of the PA applications is the irrigation, which is
the process of delivering water to the soil. Water requirements
for plants vary based on crop species, crop growth stage, soil mois-
ture, soil temperature, and soil type (Wan, 2001). In traditional irri-
gation, farmers irrigate plants without any accurate calculations.
This usually results in wasting the water and irrigating crops
unevenly (Ali, 2011). Due to the fact that traditional irrigation is
normally performed without precise knowledge of the soil, it leads
to erratic water supply for the plants, which results in fewer yields,
time consuming and more human efforts. There is clearly a need to
do something about soil moisture and soil temperature. They have
to be adjusted and regulated precisely to avoid water overflow and
the risk of evaporation.
To achieve some of the mentioned PA features and benefits, this
paper proposes Variable Sampling Interval Precision Agriculture

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2018.04.010
1319-1578/Ó 2018 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Please cite this article in press as: Hamouda, Y., Msallam, M. Variable sampling interval for energy-efficient heterogeneous precision agriculture using
Wireless Sensor Networks. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2018.04.010
2 Y. Hamouda, M. Msallam / Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences xxx (2018) xxx–xxx
(VSI-PA) system using WSNs. The main contributions for this paper
are as follows: (1) To automatize irrigation decision making
through sensing the agricultural parameters so that crop yields will
be enhanced, water usage will be save, and labor workers will be
significantly reduced; (2) To improve energy consumption, the
sampling interval, which is the time between two sensing or mea-
suring agricultural parameters, is adaptively calculated based on
the current sensed temperature; (3) To distinguish and treat differ-
ent areas separately based on the type and soil conditions.
The paper is divided into five sections. After this introduction,
Section 2 explores and critically analyses work related to PA. Sec-
tion 3 introduces detailed description of VSI-PA system. Section 4
describes a simulation-based evaluation. Finally, Section 5 summa-
rizes the paper.
2. Related work
Precision agriculture using WSNs is designed and developed
(Diedrichs et al., 2014; Le and Tan, 2015). In (Diedrichs et al.,
2014), WSNs based on IEEE 802.15.4 are developed to measure
the temperature. In (Le and Tan, 2015), the environmental param-
eters including temperature, air humidity, light, soil moisture, and
pH level are monitored and controlled. In (Hamouda and Elhabil,
2017), Greenhouse Smart Management System (GSMS) is devel-
oped to control, manage and monitor the agriculture inside green-
houses. The ambient relative humidity and temperature are
measured using WSN. Agricultural monitoring systems using
WSNs are developed by Xu et al. (2015); Khedo et al. (2014); Das
et al. (2009); Shinghal et al. (2010). In (Xu et al., 2015), soil temper-
ature, soil moisture, atmospheric temperature, atmospheric
humidity, CO2 concentration, PH values and illumination intensity
are monitored. Alarms are sent when the parameters exceed
threshold values. In (Khedo et al., 2014), the temperature, humidity
and carbon dioxide level are measured and sent to farmers. Disease
monitoring of grape vine crops is monitored in (Das et al., 2009). In
(Shinghal et al., 2010), the potato plants are monitored individually
to improve crop production. The automatic irrigation systems
using WSNs have been receiving great attention. The soil moisture
and soil temperature are measured and monitored in (Tarange
et al., 2015; Haule and Michael, 2014; Patel et al., 2011). In (Patel
et al., 2011), the amount of water required for irrigation is deter-
mined to save water and to increase productivity. The soil water
content for irrigation is measured in (Milind and Bhaskar, 2014).
Threshold values for irrigation are predefined according to the crop
type and plant growth stage. The system proposed in (Ramya et al.,
2012) measures temperature, soil moisture, humidity and the level
of water tank used for cardamom plants irrigation. An irrigation
system is developed in (Nandurkar et al., 2014) to monitor the
crops and allow irrigation as needed. An intelligent cultivation
management system is presented in (ZENG et al., 2016) to improve
crop yield. Temperature, humidity, light, and concentration of CO2
are sensed to monitor and control the garden. Pumps and valves
are automatically opened for irrigation when the measurements
exceed threshold values. In (Bennis et al., 2015), a model for drip
irrigation system is proposed to overcome the blockage of water
emitter and the broken pipes through monitoring the soil mois-
ture, temperature and pressure. In (Hamouda, 2017), Smart Irriga-
tion Decision Support (SIDS) system using fuzzy logic is developed
for water irrigation. The soil temperature and moisture are sensed
and employed to compute the amount of irrigation time using
fuzzy logic.
Energy-efficient precision agriculture has been discussed in
many studies. In (Math and Dharwadkar, 2017), energy-efficient
framework is developed for precision agriculture. The sensor nodes
are classified into coordinator and remote nodes. The remote nodes
Please cite this article in press as: Hamouda, Y., Msallam, M. Variable sampling interval for energy-efficient heterogeneous precision agriculture using
Wireless Sensor Networks. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2018.04.010
are scheduled to sleep for a while to save energy. Energy-efficient
routing protocol is developed in (Maurya and Jain, 2017) for
automatized irrigation system, where the entire area is divided
into region-based fixed clusters. In (Nayak et al., 2014), harnessing
wind energy is used to charge the batteries of sensor nodes. In
addition, adaptive power-aware routing protocol is adopted to
improve the energy efficiency and network lifetime. In (Sahota
et al., 2010), Media Access Control (MAC), a layer is designed to
increase the energy efficiency through wake-up synchronization.
Moreover, network layer is designed through periodic data collec-
tion to minimize the energy consumption.
Having discussed that, the above-mentioned literature adopted
fixed sampling interval. Thus, damage is caused to crops when
value of fixed sampling interval is large and high energy is con-
sumed when its value is small.
In this paper, a VSI-PA system is proposed to overcome the lim-
itations of the current research. The VSI-PA system considers the
whole area of different types of plants. In addition, a specific sam-
pling interval is mapped for each plant area separately. Further-
more, the VSI-PA adopts an adaptive mechanism to calculate
sampling intervals for each plant’s area. The sampling interval is
adaptively calculated and mapped to each plant’s area according
to the current agricultural parameters and requirements for each
plant to reduce the network consumed energy and improve the
crop yields.
3. VSI-PA detailed description
3.1. Problem formalization
The agricultural farm (A) is divided into ‘‘m” areas (ai ), where
i ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; m so that heterogeneous plants can be planted in the
farm. The agricultural farm is a set of areas (ai ) as fol-
lows:A ¼ fa1 ; a2 ; . . . ; am g. Each area (ai ) has a set (Sai ðkÞ) of
‘‘nai ðkÞ” sensor nodes as follows: Sai ¼ fsi1 ; si2 ; . . . ; sinai g, where sij
is the ‘‘jth” sensor node in area (ai ) and j ¼ 1; 2; . . . nai . Therefore,
the set and the total number of sensor node for the agricultural
farm are defined as Snet and ‘‘N” respectively, where
P
Snet ¼ Sa1 [ Sa2 [ . . . [ Sam and N ¼ m i¼1 nai . It is assumed that there
are no conflict nodes which are defined as the sensor nodes that
can sense the agricultural parameters for more than one area.
Therefore, Sap \ Saq ¼ U for all p  m and q  m, where U is the
empty set. At each time step (k), VSI-PA system selects a sensing
set for each area (Ss ðai ; kÞ) of ‘‘ns ðai ; kÞ” sensor nodes to sense the
agricultural parameters, where Ss ðai ; kÞ ¼ fsi1 ; si2 ; . . . ; sins ðai ;kÞ g,
ns ðai ; kÞ 6 nai , and Ss ðai ; kÞ  Sai . The area and sensor node locations
are defined as Lai ¼ ½ xai yai T and Lsij ¼ ½ xsij ysij T , respectively. At
each time step (k), the variable sampling interval of area (ai ) is also
calculated according to the agricultural parameters and denoted as
Dtv ðai ; kÞ.
3.2. Sensor node structure
The sensor nodes are classified into three categories which are
Normal Sensor Node (NSN), Master Sensor Node (MSN) and Sink
Sensor Node (SSN). The NSN has limited-resources in terms of pro-
cessing and energy. As shown in Fig. 1, the NSN is equipped with
sensors, to measure soil moisture and temperature, wireless com-
munication unit, to wirelessly communicate with other sensor
nodes, and limited processing capabilities, to cooperate with in-
network processing (Wieselthier et al., 2002; Potdar et al., 2009).
The MSN and SSN are full-resources nodes with higher processing
and energy capabilities. However, the MSN and SSN do not support
 Y. Hamouda, M. Msallam / Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences xxx (2018) xxx–xxx
Fig. 1. Normal Sensor Node (NSN) Component and Architecture.
the sensing capability. They are used for data exchange and
communication.
Since the energy efficiency is a crucial feature in WSNs, the sen-
sor node operates in one of predefined modes which are sensing
mode (Sen.) to sense soil moisture and temperature; communicat-
ing mode (Comm.) to transmit, or receive data from other node;
processing mode (Proc.) to perform the processing tasks; and
sleeping mode to listen for possible communication. The sensing,
communicating and processing modes are active modes because
the sensor node consumes energy in sensing, transmitting, receiv-
ing, and processing activities. On the other hand, the sleeping
mode is a low-energy communication channel in which sensor
node listens to channel status for transmission initialization, or
waits for traffic from other sensor nodes (Miller and Vaidya,
2005). Therefore, sensor nodes in sleeping mode have to be trig-
gered to ‘‘wakeup” for communicating, processing or sensing. The
state diagram of sensor node shown in Fig. 2 explains the changing
among the sensor node modes. The default mode of sensor node is
Fig. 2. State Diagram for Sensor Node.
Please cite this article in press as: Hamouda, Y., Msallam, M. Variable sampling interval for energy-efficient heterogeneous precision agriculture using
Wireless Sensor Networks. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2018.04.010
3
the sleeping mode. NSN is triggered to enter the communicating
mode. According to the messages received by sensor node, the
operation modes are changed as shown in Fig. 2.
3.3. VSI-PA framework
As shown in Fig. 3, the agriculture farm, with width, W and
length, L is divided into smaller areas in which the heterogeneous
plants are planted. NSNs are the sensor nodes that sense the agri-
culture parameters. MSNs receive the information from NSNs and
relay it to SSN. Finally, the SSNs forward the measurements to
the server and farmers via Internet, cellular network, or satellite
communication. The server performs processing and storage
requirements for VSI-PA. Therefore, the server sends the suitable
triggers for the actuators, such as triggering the valves and pumps
for irrigation. Furthermore, the server performs algorithm that
adaptively calculates the next sampling interval, and sends the
appreciate commands to the farm.
3.4. Sensor nodes selection Algorithm
The irrigation system is used for precision agriculture purposes.
At each time step (k), the soil moisture and soil temperature for
each area (ai ) is measured and denoted as M ai ðkÞ and T ai ðkÞ respec-
tively. Like most research into precision agriculture, the irrigation
using VSI-PA system triggers the valves, pumps, and other actua-
tors when the measured agricultural parameters exceed a prede-
fined threshold value. Therefore, the VSI-PA system activates the
irrigation process when M ai ðkÞ of ai reaches to a predefined thresh-
old value, which is set based on crop requirements (e.g. size, age
and type). Thus, the soil moisture should be monitored periodi-
cally. However, soil moisture is measured in discrete times for each
area separately. The sensor nodes used to measure the agricultural
parameters are firstly selection as shown in Algorithm 1. At each
time step (k), the nearest sensor nodes set (Ss ðai ; kÞ) to the area ai
center with energy level bigger than predefined threshold value
Eth is selected to sense the soil moisture and temperature. The
Euclidean Distance (ED) is used to measure the distance between
the sensor node and the area center according to the relation:
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
dij ¼ ½Lsij  Lai T ½Lsij  Lai  ð1Þ
The average readings of the selected ‘‘ns ðai ; kÞ” sensors of ai are
recorded as the current Mai ðkÞ and T ai ðkÞ according to the following
relations:-
4 Y. Hamouda, M. Msallam / Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences xxx (2018) xxx–xxx

Fig. 3. VSI-PA framework.

nsX
ðai ;kÞ Algorithm 2, the variable sampling interval at each time step is
M sij ðkÞ selected according to the soil temperature. The sampling interval
j¼1
M ai ðkÞ ¼ ð2Þ is reduced when the temperature is high. This means that the rate
ns ðai ; kÞ of soil moisture reduction is also high, and in turn, the soil moisture
is measured in time before it drops significantly below the threshold
nsX
ðai ;kÞ
value, and causes damage to the plants and reduction of the crop
T sij ðkÞ
yields. On the other hand, the sampling interval is increased when
j¼1
T ai ðkÞ ¼ ð3Þ the temperature is low. This means that the rate of soil moisture
ns ðai ; kÞ
reduction is also low, and consecutively. The overall energy con-
where Msij ðkÞ and T sij ðkÞ are the soil moisture and temperature read- sumption by the network is reduced, and the network lifetime is
ings of sensor (sij ) in area (ai ). improved. Therefore, the variable sampling interval (Dtv ðai ; kÞ) and
the soil temperature (T ai ðkÞ) of area (ai ) at time k are assumed to
Algorithm 1: Sensor Node Selection be limited into a range as Dtmin 6 Dt v ðai ; kÞ  Dtmax and T min 
T ai ðkÞ 6 T max respectively. The variable sampling interval (Dt v ðai ; kÞ)
1: for each area ai do:
at time step (k) is assumed to be selected according to an inverse
2: set ‘ ¼ 0;
liner function of T ai ðkÞ according to the following equation:
3: while ‘  ns ðai ; kÞ do:
4: for each sensor node sij 2 Sai ðkÞ do:  
Dt min  Dt max
5: calculate ED (dij ) to the area centre based on Eq. (1); Dtv ðai ; kÞ ¼ ðT ai ðkÞ  T max Þ þ Dtmin ð4Þ
T max  T min
6: end for;
7: find the sensor node sij with minimum ED; According to Eq. (4), when the soil temperature is a minimum
8: if (Er ðai ; sij ; kÞ > Eth ) do: value (T min ), the sampling interval is a maximum value (Dtmax ),
and vice versa. The parameters T min , T max , Dtmin and Dtmax are cho-
9: add sij to Ss ðai ; kÞ;
sen according to crop and soil types.
10: measure M sij ðkÞ and T sij ðkÞ;
11: end if; Algorithm 2: Variable Sampling Interval Selection
12: remove sij from next search;
1: for each area ai do:
13: increment ‘: ‘ ¼ ‘ þ 1;
2: initialization:
14: end while;
3: initialize the time step k ¼ 0;
15: compute the average readings M ai ðkÞ andT ai ðkÞbased
4: set independently,Dt v ðai ; 0Þ;
on Eq. (2) and (3);
5: advance the time,t ai ðk þ 1Þ ¼ Dt v ðai ; 0Þ;
16: end for;
6: define values for T min ; T max ; Dt min ; Dt max ;
7: end initialization;
8: while (stop condition is not valid) do:
3.5. Sampling interval selection algorithm
9: compute the average readingT ai ðkÞaccording to
Algorithm 1;
Unlike PA schemes using a fixed sampling interval, the proposed
10: calculate the sampling intervalDt v ðai ; kÞbased on
VSI-PA scheme adaptively calculates the sampling interval to
Eq. (4);
improve the energy efficiency and maintain the soil moisture of
11: advances the timetai ðk þ 1Þ ¼ t ai ðkÞ þ Dt v ðai ; kÞ;
the plants with improved crop yields. Each area is assumed to have
12: end while;
different soil temperature variation. However, all plants are
13: end for;
assumed to have the same water consumption. As shown in

Please cite this article in press as: Hamouda, Y., Msallam, M. Variable sampling interval for energy-efficient heterogeneous precision agriculture using
Wireless Sensor Networks. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2018.04.010
 Y. Hamouda, M. Msallam / Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences xxx (2018) xxx–xxx 5

3.6. VSI-PA communication protocol

8: GTrig message is received from SSN;
Protocol 1 shows that the communication protocol runs in 9: schedule the event: communication;
NSNs. Firstly, each NSN identifies its MSN and enters sleeping 10: Event 2: Communication
mode waiting for activation. NSNs send periodically (Beacon) mes- 11: turn on communication channel (i.e.
sages to its MSN containing its current states such as the remaining communicating mode);
battery level and timestamp for time synchronization. When the 12: relay GTrig message to sensing NSNs (multicasting);
MSN sends a group-triggering message (GTrig) to NSNs, the NSNs 13: schedule event: Readings;
wake up to sense and send the agricultural parameters such as soil 14: Event 3: Readings
moisture and temperature. NSNs send the measurement readings 15: waiting for measurements from the sensing group;
to MSN through the sensing messages (SMeg) message. 16: SMeg message is received from the sensing group;
17: Determine the best route to SSN via MSNs (multi-
Protocol 1: Communication Protocol for NSN hop communication);
1: Initialization 18: relay SMeg message to SSN;
2: identify the current MSN; 19: schedule event: Sleeping;
3: set Timer_Beacon; 20: Event 4: Sleeping
4: schedule event: sleeping; 21: shutdown the communication channel;
5: end initialization; 22: turn on the low-energy communication channel (i.e.
6: while (true) do: sleeping mode);
7: Event 1: Sensing 23: Event 5: Beacon
8: GTrig message is received from MSN;9: turn on 24: Timer_Beacon is expired;
the sensing circuits (i.e. sensing mode); 25: turn on the energy communication channel (i.e.
9: sense the agricultural parameters; communicating mode);
10: schedule event: communication; 26: Beacon message is received from the NSNs;
11: Event 2: Communication 27: record the NSNs states and synchronize the time
12: turn on the communication channel (i.e. with NSNs;
communicating mode); 28: schedule event: sleeping;
13: send SMeg message to the MSN; 29: Event 6: Information
14: schedule event: sleeping; 30: Req_GInfo message is received from SSN;
15: Event 3: Sleeping 31: turn on the energy communication channel (i.e.
16: shutdown the sensing circuit and communication communicating mode);
channel; 32: send Res_GInfo to the SSN containing the NSNs
17: turn on the low-energy communication channel (i.e. states;
sleeping mode); 33: schedule event: sleeping;
18: Event 4: Beacon 34: end while;
19: Timer_Beacon is expired;
20: turn on the communication channel (i.e. 3.7. Energy consumption model
communicating mode);
21: send Beacon message to MSN; Energy is consumed during sensing and communication activi-
22: schedule event: sleeping; ties. As in (Wang and Chandrakasan, 2002), the energy consump-
23: end while; tion of the sensor (si ) to transmit l -bit message to the sensor (sj )
over a distance dij is:

wTX ðl; dij Þ ¼ a1 :l þ a2 :l:dij

2
Protocol 2 shows the communication protocol runs in MSNs. Firstly, ð5Þ
MSN identifies its current NSNs and enters the sleeping mode wait-
where a1 is the electronic energy required to transmit one bit and
ing for activation. The MSN wakes up periodically to receive (Bea-
con) messages from NSNs, records NSNs states, and synchronizes
a2 is the related to radio energy. The energy consumption to receive
l -bit message is:
the time with NSNs. The MSN forwards the (GTrig) messages
received from SSN to its NSNs. On the other hand, MSN forwards wRX ¼ a3 :l ð6Þ
the (SMeg) messages received from its NSNs to SSN. When MSN
receives a request from SSN containing the sensing group informa- 4. Results and discussion
tion (Req_GInfo) message, it replies a response to SSN containing the
sensing group information (Req_GInfo) message that give informa- 4.1. Simulation assumption
tion about the NSNs states to be used for VSI-PA algorithms.
In this section, the performance of the proposed VSI-PA system
Protocol 2: Communication Protocol for MSN is evaluated using event-driven simulation. C++ is used to build the
1: Initialization simulation environment using core i5 of 2.5 GHz processor and 4
2: identify the current NSNs; MB memory. The simulation results are averaged over 20 runs with
3: set Timer_Beacon; different random sensor placement using fixed sensor density, and
4: schedule event: Sleeping; the simulator is stopped after 130 days. The agricultural farm of
5: end initialization; 200 m  200 m is divided into equal four areas (m ¼ 4) with 100
6: while (true) do: m  100 m for each area. Four MSNs are placed in the center of
7: Event 1: Activation each area, and one SSN is placed in the most left-top corner of
the agricultural farm. For each time step, three NSNs
(ns ðai ; kÞ ¼ 3) are selected for each area to sense the solid moisture,

Please cite this article in press as: Hamouda, Y., Msallam, M. Variable sampling interval for energy-efficient heterogeneous precision agriculture using
Wireless Sensor Networks. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2018.04.010
6 Y. Hamouda, M. Msallam / Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences xxx (2018) xxx–xxx

and the average reading is recorded. The sensor reading is assumed
to be within a sensing range of 50 m. Therefore, to increase the
likelihood of sensing area by three sensor nodes with sensing range
of 50 m at all-time steps, the number of NSNs deployed in the agri-
cultural farm should be calculated properly. The sensor density of
q ¼ 5:6  103 sensors=m2 can guarantee 100% that three NSNs or
more within sensing range inside the areas (Wang et al., 2008).
Thus, for a given agricultural farm of A ¼ 200  200m2 , the number
of NSNs required to be uniformly deployed is N ¼ qA ¼ 224sensor
nodes.
We assume line of sight (LOS) communication between the
nodes within the same coverage area. Two nodes are in the same
coverage area if the distance between them is equal to or less than
the radio range, which is set to 100 m. Therefore, MSN for each area
is within the coverage area of all NSNs in the same area. The MSN is
also within the coverage area of its neighbor MSNs. The Destina-
tion Sequenced Distance Vector routing (DSDV) routing protocol,
which is a proactive ad hoc routing protocol, has been imple-
mented in the simulation model for the multi-hop routing among
MSNs and SSN (Perkins and Bhagwat, 1994). The energy model
parameters are set as follows: a1 = 100 nJ/b, a2 = 1 pJ/bm2, a3 =
100 nJ/b. The sensing energy cost for all sensor nodes is assumed
to be 8 nJ. The energy level of each sensor node is set to 0.5 J.
The communication loads for all measurements and management
messages are assumed to use l ¼ 200KB. The VSI-PA system is used
with T min ¼ 25C ; T max ¼ 40C , Dt min ¼ 7 days and Dtmax ¼ 14 days.
For each irrigation activity, the soil moisture is assumed to rise
to 60%.
As discussed in Section 2, the related research in precision agri-
culture adopt fixed sampling interval. In the following simulation
results, these researches are referred as fixed schemes. The pro-
posed VSI-PA system is compared with the fixed schemes devel-
oped in the literature.

4.2. VSI-PA evaluation

The agricultural farm with four areas of VSI-PA system is shown

in Fig. 4. The dots represent the locations of NSNs inside the farm.
The SSN and MSNs locations with routing paths based on DSDV are
also shown. Each MSN has a path through other MSNs to send the
messages to SSN.
At each time step (k), the soil moisture (Mai ðkÞ) and soil temper-
ature (T ai ðkÞ) for each area (ai ) are measured and plotted in Figs. 5
and 6 respectiv M ai ðkÞ ely. The readings of sensor nodes are set ran-
Fig. 4. Network topology and structure for the simulated VSI-PA.
domly in the interval ½T min T max , where T min ¼ 25C ; T max ¼ 40C .

Fig. 5. Soil temperature of VSI-PA system for each area.

Please cite this article in press as: Hamouda, Y., Msallam, M. Variable sampling interval for energy-efficient heterogeneous precision agriculture using
Wireless Sensor Networks. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2018.04.010
 Y. Hamouda, M. Msallam / Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences xxx (2018) xxx–xxx 7

The measured soil temperature (T ai ðkÞ) for each area (ai ) at time
step (k) is the average readings of selected sensor nodes (ns ðai ; kÞ)
at time step (k). Therefore, the average readings of selected sensor
nodes are plotted versus the simulated time in Fig. 5. Conse-
quently, soil moisture (Mai ðkÞ), at each time step (k) for each area,
is measured and plotted in Fig. 6. In addition, an irrigation activity
is performed at each time step (k) after measuring the current level
of soil moisture (Mai ðkÞ). It is assumed that the level of soil mois-
ture after each irrigation activity rises to 60%. The measured soil
moisture (), before irrigation activity, along with its level after irri-
gation activity (i.e. 60%) at each time step (k) for each area, are
plotted in Fig. 6.
As shown in Fig. 5, soil temperature varies from area to another.
In turn, the variable sampling interval is calculated independently
for each area according to its soil temperature readings.
Fig. 7 shows the total energy consumption versus the simulation
time of the proposed VSI-PA for each area. For all areas, the energy Fig. 7. Energy consumption of VSI-PA system for each area.
consumption increases with the simulation time because each irri-
gation activity consumes energy in sensing and communication
where irrigation activities are performed at the end of each sam- 4.4. The impact of selection algorithm
pling interval. The increase of energy consumption with simulation
time differs from area to another because the VSI-PA system calcu- As proposed in Section 3.4, the sensor nodes (ns ðai ; kÞ) is
lates the variable of sampling interval for each area separately. selected to measure the soil parameters. The plants roots are
assumed to be focusing on the center of the area particularly in
4.3. Variable sampling interval selection early stages of plants growth (Judd et al., 2015). Thus, the sensor
nodes around the area center can highly represent the area and
Fig. 8 shows sampling intervals of different schemes for each the plant requirements of water irrigation. Therefore, the closest
area. The sampling intervals of the fixed schemes are static and sensor nodes with energy level bigger than defined threshold value
do not change during the simulation time. The sampling interval are selected to detect the soil parameters.
of the proposed VSI-PA system is selected for each area indepen- Fig. 9 shows the total energy consumption of the network with
dently according to Eq. (4). simulation time for different selected nodes size. For all selected

Fig. 6. Soil moisture of VSI-PA system for each area.

Please cite this article in press as: Hamouda, Y., Msallam, M. Variable sampling interval for energy-efficient heterogeneous precision agriculture using
Wireless Sensor Networks. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2018.04.010
8 Y. Hamouda, M. Msallam / Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences xxx (2018) xxx–xxx

Fig. 8. Sampling interval of different scheme for each area.

nodes size, the total energy consumption increases with simulation
time because sensing and communicating activities are performed
at each time step. However, a higher selected nodes size gives
higher energy consumption because more sensor nodes are
involved for communicating and sensing activities.
The impact of selected sensor nodes size is evaluated where soil
moisture error, soil temperature error, and total energy consump-
tion of the whole farm are calculated for difference selected nodes
size. The real measurements of soil moisture (M r ðai ; kÞ) and tem-
perature (T r ðai ; kÞ) at time step (k) for area (ai ) is defined as the
average of all sensor nodes readings of the area, where:
nai ðkÞ
X jT r ðai ; kÞ  T ai ðkÞj
M sij ðkÞ
j¼1
M r ðai ; kÞ ¼
nai ðkÞ
Fig. 9. Total energy consumption of network for different scheme.
nai ðkÞ
X
M sij ðkÞ
j¼1
Mr ðai ; kÞ ¼ ð8Þ
nai ðkÞ
Therefore, the soil moisture (M e ðai ; kÞ) and temperature
(T e ðai ; kÞ) errors at time step (k) for area (ai ) are defined according
to the following equations:
jMr ðai ; kÞ  M ai ðkÞj
Me ðai ; kÞ ¼  100% ð9Þ
Mr ðai ; kÞ
T e ðai ; kÞ ¼  100% ð10Þ
T r ðai ; kÞ
ð7Þ where M ai ðkÞ and T ai ðkÞ are the soil moisture and temperature
which are calculated here using the selected sensor nodes
(ns ðai ; kÞ) according to Eqs. (2) and (3). The average soil moisture
and soil temperature errors for all areas over all simulation time
are calculated and recorded in Table 2, for selected nodes size of
1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. With increasing the selected sensor nodes size,
the average soil moisture and soil temperature errors are reduced
because more readings of soil moisture and temperature are per-
formed. On the other hand, total energy consumption of network
is increased with using more selected sensor nodes because com-
municating and sensing activities are increased with increasing
the selected sensor nodes.
As show in Table 1, the soil moisture and temperature errors at
selected nodes size of 5 are reduced by 8% compared with its value
at selected nodes size of 4. Nevertheless, total energy consumption
at selected nodes size of 5 is increased by 17% compared with its
value at selected nodes size of 4. Consequently, the cost of total
energy consumption of network due to increasing of selected
nodes size is high compared with the improvement of soil mois-
ture and soil temperature errors. Therefore, the selected sensor
nodes size is a designed parameter which can be selected accord-

Please cite this article in press as: Hamouda, Y., Msallam, M. Variable sampling interval for energy-efficient heterogeneous precision agriculture using
Wireless Sensor Networks. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2018.04.010
 Y. Hamouda, M. Msallam / Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences xxx (2018) xxx–xxx 9

Table 1
Soil moisture error, soil temperature error, and total energy consumption of the
whole farm for different selected nodes size.

Selected Nodes Average Average Total Energy

(ns ðai ; kÞ) Temperature Error Moisture Error Consumption (J)
(%) (%)
1 12.39 20.42 42.804
2 8.32 13.41 58.684
3 6.61 10.22 74.606
4 5.76 9.07 89.413
5 5.31 8.44 104.86

ing to required sensing accuracy crop and current network lifetime.

For instance, if the crop is valuable and requires precise soil detec-
tion, high number of sensor nodes can be selected. In contrast, low
number of sensor nodes is selected for less valuable crop to
increase the network lifetime.

4.5. Comparison with fixed scheme Fig. 11. Average soil moisture of the whole farm for different scheme.

Fig. 10 shows the soil moisture of different scheme for each

area. In addition, Fig. 11 shows the average soil moisture of the
whole agricultural farm for each different scheme. The soil mois-
ture reduces severely in case of using a fixed scheme with sam-
pling intervals of 14 days because its sampling interval for
sensing the soil moisture is the highest compared with other
schemes. On the other hand, the soil moisture in case of using a
fixed scheme with sampling intervals of 7 days has the lowest val-
ues because its sampling interval for sensing the soil moisture is
the lowest compared with other schemes. However, the highest
values of energy consumption occur. A fixed scheme with sampling
intervals of 11 days has soil moisture behavior between the two
fixed schemes with sampling intervals of 7 and 14 days. Since
the proposed VSI-PA system selects the sampling interval based
on soil temperature variations, it maintains soil temperature with
small values, compared with fixed scheme with sampling interval
of 11 days and 7 days.
Energy consumption of different scheme for each area is plotted
in Fig. 12. Furthermore, Fig. 13 also shows the total energy con-
sumption of the network for different scheme. The energy con-
sumption increases with simulation time. A lower sampling
interval gives higher energy consumption because more sensing
and communication activities are required to do monitoring and
water irrigation. Therefore, Figs. 12 and 13 show that the lowest
and highest values of energy consumption occur in case of using
the fixed schemes with sampling interval of 14 days and 7 days
respectively. The fixed scheme with sampling interval of 11 days

Fig. 10. Soil moisture of different scheme for each area.

Please cite this article in press as: Hamouda, Y., Msallam, M. Variable sampling interval for energy-efficient heterogeneous precision agriculture using
Wireless Sensor Networks. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2018.04.010
10 Y. Hamouda, M. Msallam / Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences xxx (2018) xxx–xxx

Fig. 12. Total energy consumption of different scheme for each area.

sumes less energy compared with fixed scheme with sampling

Fig. 13. Total energy consumption of network for different scheme.
consumes energy between the fixed schemes with sampling inter-
val of 7 and 14 days. Since the proposed VSI-PA system selects
sampling interval based on the soil temperature variations, it con-
interval of 11 days and 14 days. The fixed scheme with sampling
interval of 14 days has the lowest energy consumption. However,
it does not provide a good constancy of soil moisture as shown
in Fig. 10 and 11.
Table 2 shows the network lifetime, number of dead nodes,
total energy consumption, average soil moisture, and the standard
deviation of soil moisture variations for fixed schemes and pro-
posed VSI-PA system. Since the standard deviation of the proposed
VSI-PA system is the lowest, it provides the lowest soil moisture
variations where the soil moisture is measured in time before it
drops significantly and causes damage to the plants so that the
crop yields are improved. In case of using fixed schemes with sam-
pling interval of 7 days and 11 days, the sensing and communica-
tion activities are performed frequently in small and fixed
intervals, which lead to the increase of energy consumption and
number of dead nodes, and in turn, reduce the network lifetime.
However, the proposed VSI-PA system performs sensing and com-
munication activities when they are needed according to the calcu-
lated sampling interval that depends on agricultural parameters.
Nevertheless, the fixed schemes with sampling interval of 14 days
can provide better performance in term of the energy consump-
tion, number of dead nodes, and network lifetime, compared with

Table 2
Network lifetime, dead nodes count, total energy consumption, average soil moisture and standard deviation of the whole farm for different scheme.

Approach Lifetime (days) Dead Nodes Total Energy Consumption (J) Soil Moisture (Average) Soil Moisture (Standard Deviation)
Dt f ¼ 7 days 70 10.84 114.09 38.97% 2.44%
Dt f ¼ 11 days 80 6.29 75.947 28.34% 4.18%
Dt f ¼ 14 days 74.67 4.64 56.875 18.75% 6.33%
VSI-PA System 80.67 5.46 74.606 29.74% 1.67%

Please cite this article in press as: Hamouda, Y., Msallam, M. Variable sampling interval for energy-efficient heterogeneous precision agriculture using
Wireless Sensor Networks. Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2018.04.010
 Y. Hamouda, M. Msallam / Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences xxx (2018) xxx–xxx
the proposed VSI-PA system. However, it has the worst standard
deviation of soil moisture variations among all other schemes.
5. Conclusion
This paper explores and critically analyses the much debated
research in precision agriculture. VSI-PA system with variable sam-
pling interval is proposed to overcome the shortcomings of other
research that use fixed sampling intervals. The main objectives of
the proposed VSI-PA system are as follows: improving of the total
energy consumption, increasing the network lifetime, while main-
taining the soil moisture, and enhancing the crop yields. At each
time step, the agriculture parameters are measured and monitored
for each area to irrigate and select the next sampling interval. The
sampling interval for each individual area is calculated according
to the current soil temperature measurement of that area. The sim-
ulation results show that the proposed VSI-PA improves the energy
consumption and maintains the soil moisture regardless of the soil
temperature variation, compared with other fixed sampling inter-
val schemes.
Declarations of interest
None.
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