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Precision irrigation based on wireless sensor network

Article  in  IET Science, Measurement and Technology · May 2014

DOI: 10.1049/iet-smt.2013.0137

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Published in IET Science, Measurement and Technology
Received on 4th August 2013
Revised on 28th November 2013
Accepted on 17th January 2014
doi: 10.1049/iet-smt.2013.0137

Special Issue on Environmental Measurement

and Instrumentation

ISSN 1751-8822

Precision irrigation based on wireless sensor network

Sabrine Khriji1, Dhouha El Houssaini1, Mohamed Wassim Jmal2, Christian Viehweger3,
Mohamed Abid2, Olfa Kanoun3
1
Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, National School of Engineers of Sfax, University of Sfax,
Sfax, Tunisia
2
Department of Electrical Engineering, CES Lab, National School of Engineers of Sfax, University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia
3
Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Measurement and Sensor Technology Lab,
Technische Universitat Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Germany
E-mail: houssaini_dhouha@live.fr

Abstract: The main purpose of this study is to present a complete irrigation solution for the farmer based on wireless sensor
network. The challenge is to create an automated irrigation system which can reduce in the same time the water’s waste and is
cost effective. Different parameters are important to measure in order to calculate the efficient quantity of water needed by
plants. In this study, the proposed solution is the use of low-cost sensor nodes having reduced power consumption able to
realise necessary requirements. The system is composed of different types of nodes. Each node consists of a TelosB mote and
adequate sensors or actuators. Soil nodes are used to detect the level of moisture and temperature in soil. Weather nodes monitor
the climatic changes. Other nodes are connected to actuators which are able to control the opening of the irrigation valve if necessary.

1 Introduction soil moisture, pesticides and many more. However,

The intention of precision agriculture is to match agricultural
inputs and practices to localised conditions within a field and
to improve the accuracy of their applications [1]. Precision
farming leads therefore to the following decisive advantages
for agriculture, environment and energy aspects: it improves
the crop yield, provides information for better management
decisions, reduces chemical and fertiliser costs through
more efficient applications, provides more accurate farm
records, increases the profit margin and reduces pollution.
Farmers have already been using precision farming
techniques in the past by using their knowledge, skills and
experience over time to work out the best ways of doing
things with the available tools. With new technologies,
farmers are waiting for better results and more benefits.
Traditional field irrigation is usually manned and needs
massive manpower and material resources, this led to
deficiency of real-time and accuracy and went against the
development trend of long-time agricultural production and
sustainable utilisation of water resources. Wireless sensor
network (WSN) is extensively used in precision agriculture
and smart irrigation to overcome these problems.
There are several sensing approaches that contribute to data
collection, including autonomous mobile systems and
embedded, networked systems. Sensor networks play the
major role in that approach. To maximise the quantity,
diversity and accuracy of information extracted from a
precision agriculture WSN [2] deployment, a variety of
reliable, high-performance and cost-effective sensor
technologies are needed. Many parameters can be
controlled such as temperature, humidity, solar radiation,
agriculture is a vast area and can be subdivided into many
fields of expertise. This paper examines the role that WSNs
can play in the irrigation process.
This paper describes different types of sensor nodes using
Crossbow’s TelosB [3] motes integrated with commercial
sensors. These motes allow the installation of a large
number of agricultural sensors with wireless data transfer to
a base station. This study provides the reader with the main
key characteristics of the developed nodes.
This paper is organised as follows: in the next section, we
outline the characteristics of similar projects done before.
Section 4 gives a detailed description in terms of hardware
and software of the device developed for the implementation
of a WSN for precision irrigation. Section 10 describes the
experimental results which confirm that the hardware and
software solutions proposed lead to a good performance.
2 Related works
WSNs have been widely used in many irrigation systems to
obtain accurate results. Each application has its own
characteristics and objectives. A wireless drip irrigation
system using soil moisture sensors was presented by Mahir
and Semih [4]. They realised an application of a WSN for
low-cost wireless controlled irrigation solution and real-time
monitoring of water content of soil based on soil moisture
sensors. Data acquisition is performed using solar powered
wireless acquisition stations in order to control the valves
for irrigation. The designed system has three units namely:
a base station unit, a valve unit and a sensor unit. With this
solution only water content was monitored.

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Table 1 Formula given by the datasheet of VH400 sensor
Voltage ranges Equations
0–1.1 V VWC = 10 V − 1
1.1–1.3 V VWC = 25 V − 17.5
1.3–1.82 V VWC = 48.08 V − 47.5
1.82–2.2 V VWC = 26.32 V − 7.89
Table 2 Experimental results
Parameters Thresholds Experimental results
gathered from sensors
soil higher than 10°C 23°C
temperature
soil moisture higher than 10% 71.05%
weather higher than 4.5°C 25.11°C
temperature below than 30°C
weather light higher than 269.1 lux 469.02 lux
below than 807.3 lux
weather below than 50% 41%
humidity
Constantinos et al. [5] propose the realisation of a smart
system for garden watering using WSNs. Their system
consists of two types of sensors motes (TelosB and IRIS),
special soil humidity sensors, electro-valves that are mote
driven with the use of relays and a Java application that is
used for data collection. In this work, only soil moisture
was monitored.
Zhou et al. [6] proposed a wireless solution for intelligent
field irrigation system based on ZigBee technology which is
of high cost, hard to be developed and has limited signal
coverage. Indu and S.R.N. [7] proposed an innovative global
system for mobile communication (GSM)/Bluetooth-based
remote controlled embedded system for irrigation. The system
sets the irrigation time depending on the temperature and
humidity reading from sensors and type of crop and can
automatically irrigate the field when unattended. Information
is exchanged between far end and designed system via short
messaging service (SMS) on GSM network. The system
informs users about many conditions like status of electricity,
dry running motor, increased temperature, water content in
soil and smoke via SMS on GSM network or by Bluetooth.
Bluetooth-based solutions are also used for this purpose
[8]. Although Bluetooth eliminates the usage cost of the
network to a great extent, its range of operation is limited to
a few metres. One cannot remotely monitor and control
devices using this technology. Also it is desirable for each
home device to have a dedicated Bluetooth module because
of the fiscal expense of this type of implementation; a
single module is shared by several devices which have a
disadvantage of access delay. Interference is also a problem
when using this technology.
Even though very similar in principle to others described in
the literature, our system is more robust, more cost effective
[Appendix (see Table 3)] and the provided user interface is
more elaborate and flexible. A farmer can control his
system locally by a Java application or remotely from any
part of the world by providing internet access. To apply
water in the right place with the right amount, soil moisture
parameter is insufficient. Different kinds of sensors (soil
moisture, soil temperature, humidity, air temperature, light
and wind speed) are involved in such an irrigation process.
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3 Development of a wireless sensor mote for
precision irrigation
This project focuses on the use of multiple sensors as a device
to control water quantity in irrigation system in real-time. The
design of the device is chosen because of its features that fulfil
the requirement for low-power consumption, low cost,
water’s waste reduced, manpower reduced and reliable data
communication between sensors nodes.
Low-power consumption: the main challenge is to design a
low-power hardware component. Thus, the overall system
should take into account the power consumption which
should be minimised as much possible as it can be at every
block of the system design. Moreover, the system uses a
battery that requires low-power consumption. It provides a
service life of several weeks.
Low cost: since we have a large number of nodes and
because our application is oriented to agriculture, our nodes
must be as cheap as possible. The easy deployment and low
maintenance cost make WSNs a cost effective solution for
monitoring. WSNs are designed to run unattended for years,
thus, greatly reducing human resources for maintenance and
repairing. Moreover, our wireless modules do not need any
cable to work.
Water’s waste reduced: to have an effective irrigation
system you need to obtain as much water to the plants, or
into the soil, as possible. It may seem easy to do, but in
fact, water loss from these systems can be up to 50%
because of the evaporation cycle. On hot and sunny days, a
good portion of water may never make it to the ground.
Therefore the irrigation system should be able to detect
when the plants are in need for water to open valves for
irrigation.
Manpower reduced: it reduces effectively manpower
requirement. Farmer can remotely control his system
without going to his farm. The irrigation is automatically
released by opening and closing the valve without the
intervention of the farmer. Sensor nodes are small in size
and weight and require no wiring which means that they are
easy to install in most locations and applications.
Low data rate: for the transmission of sensor data, we do
not need high-transmission rates. A few kbps will be
sufficient. This also enables lower-power consumption and
lower bit error rate while transmitting. The use of this
device will not only reduce the overall monitoring system
cost in terms of labour cost, but also provides flexibility in
terms of distance or location.
This device is being developed with the following goals:
† Each mote must be able to communicate with the gateway
via a highly reliable radio module compatible with the IEEE
802.15.4 standard which intends to offer the fundamental
lower network layers of a type of wireless personal area
network which focuses on low-cost, low-speed ubiquitous
communication between devices.
† It is proposed to develop a system which detects soil and
environmental parameters through a sensor node and
displays measured parameter in real-time.
† It must be able to process orders received by the base station.
† Display real-time parameters of the environment received
via Java interface or via web site. These interfaces must be
simple to use and receptive to the user’s needs.
† Negative weather conditions do not affect a device’s work.
The following sections present the hardware and software
parts used in the sensor nodes that have been developed.
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4 Description of the hardware
The prototype consists of three parts: the base station, the
wireless sensor module and the software part. The base
station will be attached to a laptop which receives logs and
displays all the sensor readings. The sensor module will
wirelessly transmit sensor data to the base station. The
software part consists of a Java application and a web site
to log and display sensor data (Fig. 1).
4.1 Base station
As shown in Fig. 1 the base station is often thought of as just a
central component that is used to gather data from distributed
nodes. This node was the heart of the whole system; its failure
is very critical and constitutes a single-point-of-failure
phenomenon. In this system, the base station consists of
two main components, the computer and the mote. The
computer is typically a laptop that runs Windows or Linux.
The mote must be able to communicate with other motes
via a highly reliable radio module compatible with the
IEEE 802.15.4 standard.
4.2 TelosB mote
For our implementation, we used a TelosB mote, which is an
ultra-low power wireless module for monitoring applications,
eco-friendly product and rapid application prototyping [3].
The low-power operation of the TelosB module is because
of the ultra-low power Texas Instruments MSP430 F1611
microcontroller featuring 10 kB of random access memory,
48 kB of flash and 128 B of information storage. This
16 bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) processor
features extremely low active and sleep current consumption
that permits TelosB to run for years on a single pair of
AA batteries. The MSP430 has an internal digitally
controlled oscillator (DCO) that may operate up to 8 MHz.
The DCO may be turned on from the sleep mode in 6 µs;
however. 292 ns is typical at room temperature. Wireless
communication is provided by the Chipcon CC2420 radio
module. This circuit combines low power and efficient
operation with support for IEEE 802.15.4. It operates in
2.4 GHz. It also has an integrated onboard antenna
with 50 m range indoor/125 m range outdoor. These
characteristics make it ideal for our watering system as it
can easily be deployed everywhere while being independent
Fig. 1 Irrigation system design
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of power installations. The TelosB works properly within
−40 to 123.8°C which is suitable for the extreme weather
conditions. The TelosB mote will be connected to the
farmer computer. It will collect data from different other
nodes plugged in the field.
5 Developed nodes
Large number of sensor nodes are spread over an area
controlling environmental and soil factors which affect the
irrigation process. Further details for each node will be
given in the following sections.
5.1 Soil node
Water is required for the basic growth of plants. When a
sufficient amount of water is not present for plant needs,
then stress can occur and ultimately leads to reduced quality
or death. Several soil parameters should be controlled to
have an efficient irrigation system.
Measuring soil moisture is important to estimate the exact
quantity of water needed for each plant in each field.
Therefore the farmer can control the water supply properly
and avoid wastes. Measuring temperature helps the farmer
to know when he should open the water container to reduce
it, which is very important in hot and dry seasons.
There are different principles of moisture sensors such as
capacitive sensors [9] where soil moisture content may
be determined via its effect on dielectric constant by
measuring the capacitance between two electrodes
implanted in the soil. Although this principle can determine
the water content at any depth, it is very costly. It requires a
careful calibration and it requires a long term of stability in
order to read the moisture. We can also mention the
time-domain reflect meter [10] which measures the
propagation of electromagnetic waves or signals. When an
electrical pulse is applied, the wave travels through these
waveguides to the end of waveguide and then reflects back.
The soil moisture level is measured with respect to travel
time of wave through waveguide and its reflected back to
the initial end of waveguide. It provides a good
measurement of the soil water content, but it is also very
costly. In the system achieved, the principle chosen is the
resistive method [10] which consists of two electrodes
enclosed in a block of porous material. Resistance blocks
work on the principle that water conducts electricity. As the
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soil moisture changes, the water content of the porous block
also changes. The electrical resistance between the two
electrodes increases as the water content of the porous
block decreases. The principle key to implement this
method is the voltage divider circuits which read out the
voltage drop across the soil samples and convert the voltage
drop reading to the moisture level of the soil [10]. As the
moisture level increases, resistance of the metal (usually
metal pins) decreases, that is, conductance of the metal will
increase and similarly when the moisture level decreases the
resistance of the metal increases, that is, conductance will
decrease.
Thus, in this work a resistive-based sensor was used instead
of a conductivity sensor because it is insensitive to salinity
and it is not corrosion over time. Indeed, the sensor used is
small, rugged and of lower power. The VH400 soil
moisture sensor by Vegetronix [11] was used for soil
monitoring. Since it measures the dielectric constant of the
soil using transmission line techniques, it is insensitive to
water salinity, and will not corrode over time. Compared
with other low-cost sensors such as gypsum block sensors,
VH400 offers a rapid response time. Key features of this
sensor include low cost with volume pricing, small size,
power consumption <7 mA, measures volumetric water
content (VWC), output voltage is proportional to the
moisture level, wide supply range 3.3–20 volt directional
current (VDC), can be buried and is water proof.
Soil temperature can influence the germination rate and
survival of woody species that grow in semi-arid and arid
environments (Scifres and Brock, 1969) [12]. After
scarification, mesquite seeds require both moisture and an
optimal temperature (29°C) to emerge and survive on the
soil surface (Scifres and Brock, 1969). So, controlling
temperature of the soil was very important to reduce water
wastes. Soil temperature also affects how quickly plants
take up water and nutrients and how fast plants can grow.
The soil temperature sensor adopts DS18B20 provided by
Maxim integrated [13] which is a lower-power consumption
digital temperature sensor. The temperature measuring of
DS18B20 is −55 to +125°C, and the precision is 0.0625°
C, 9–12 bits A/D. Owing to its small size, it can save many
lead wires and much logic circuitry. It requires only one pin
for communication and can be powered with 3 V. It
consists of three wires. The black wire is connected to the
ground, the red is connected to the voltage common
collector (VCC) and finally the white is connected to
digital-analogue convertor (DAC) channel pin.
5.2 Weather node
The environment monitoring part consists of various types of
sensors to collect environmental factors such as luminance
level, temperature, relative humidity and wind speed. Air
temperature has a crucial role in plant’s growth; low
temperature causes a decrease in the absorption and
movement of water in plants. Humidity also plays a major
role in plant growth; low humidity causes fast transpiration.
Fast transpiration means your plants will be taking up and
using lots of water (and nutrients). Normally, the range of
healthy relative humidity for the plants is from 50 to 70%.
High air moisture reduces the required plant watering
frequency [14]. With the help of a sensor (Sensirion SHT11
[15]) integrated in the TelosB, we can control ambient
temperature and humidity. Both sensors are seamlessly
coupled to a 14 bit analogue to digital converter and a serial
interface circuit. The two wire serial interface and internal
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voltage regulation allows for easy and fast system
integration. Temperature accuracy of the sensor is ± 0.3°C
and the accuracy of the relative humidity is under ± 2%.
The tiny size and low-power consumption makes SHT11
the ultimate choice for even the most demanding
applications including sensor networks.
The water’s application pattern is susceptible to distortion
by the wind. Although the wind speed and direction are not
controlled variables, their effect on irrigation uniformity is
significant, so a farmer should take in consideration the
wind speed when irrigating. So to obtain more information
about weather changes that affect the plant growth the mote
is accomplished with a wind speed sensor. Using this
sensor is helpful to detect if irrigation is good for this
period or not because when the wind speed is high the
water will not persist in the soil.
For this node we used the VORTEX anemometer wind
speed sensor [16]. It is a rugged wind sensor which can
handle speeds from 5 to over 125 mph. A reed switch/
magnet provides one pulse per rotation. The vortex wind
sensor is supplied without any electronics.
5.3 Container node
In the container, an actuator will be attached to the TelosB
mote. When urgent conditions are detected on other nodes,
a simple order will be given to the actuator to open or not
the water valve for irrigation. To control the irrigation
process, we used solenoid valves provided by Rain Bird
[17]. A solenoid valve is an electromechanical valve that is
controlled by an electric current. The electric valve is a
low-power consumption device and it is powered with 24 V
for 50/60 Hz. For the TelosB motes to be able to drive the
valves we used relays. The relay is used for switching
the amount of power with a small operating power. Then,
the relay is connected in series with the electro-valve and
an external 9 V battery. This way, when the TelosB mote
triggers the relay, the circuit closes, the electro-valve opens
and the irrigation process begins.
6 Description of the software part
The sensor motes were programmed in TinyOS [18] with the
nesC [19], a component-oriented programming language.
TinyOS is a component-based architecture and forms an
event-driven operating system. A software program was
developed and uploaded into the sensor nodes to allow each
node to measure the adequate parameter.
To succeed in retrieving data from a sensor, the appropriate
pin for each wire (analogue-digital convertor (ADC), DAC,
ground, analogue voltage common collector (AVCC)…)
must be chosen. For example, the VH400 soil moisture has
three wires: the bare represents the ground, it is connected
to PIN 9; the black represents data, it is connected to ADC1
and the red represents the power, it is connected to PIN 1
(AVCC).
Fig. 2 shows the nesC component diagram for the mote as
developed. SoilMoteC is a new component that is grafted on
to TinyOS and is optimised for the use of two soil sensors:
VH400 and DS18B20. The programme entry point is
supplied by the MainC component using the boot interface.
For the programmes to function, it is necessary to
instantiate a TimerMilliC component, which is required to
manage the programme timer and cancel any previously
running timer and to signals that the timer has expired or
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Fig. 2 SoilMoteC: NesC component diagram generated by the Eclipse plug-in YETI2 [20]
repeated (SimpleTimer1). For communications, two
AMSenderC components are required, one of the type
ActiveMessageC and another of the type AMSender. The
AMSend instance of the AMSenderC component is used to
send the data gathered from the sensors to the sink node.
The Packet instance of the AMSenderC component is used
to collect data into packet.
The last component, ActiveMessageC, is used to initiate the
radio module, set the number of retries and the delay between
them, and manage its operating time. In this way, energy
expenditure by the radio transceiver can be optimised.
For reading parameters, three components are required:
Msp430InternalVoltageC is used to read the battery level
every hour, VH400C is used to read the soil moisture and
the DS18B20C is used to read the soil temperature.
7 Motes deployment and network
architecture
We placed our motes in a star topology [10] where sensors are
mounted on different motes as shown in Fig. 3. This topology
consists of a central node (base station), to which all other
nodes (soil node, weather node and container node) are
connected; this central node provides a common connection
point for all nodes and it acts as a conduit to transmit
messages. The star topology reduces the damage of the
failure caused by the line failure by connecting all the
systems to a central node. The failure of a transmission line
linking any peripheral node to the central node will result in
the isolation of that node from all the other, but the rest of
the system will be unaffected. With this topology there is a
potential of battery power saving because all the nodes
which are connected to the central node spend their time in
the sleep mode, only waking up to make measurement and
send the data to the base node.
Each mote is responsible to retrieve the appropriate
parameter (moisture, temperature, wind speed …). The data
from each node will be transmitted to the base station
where it will be recorded and sent to the farmer’s personal
computer (PC) in time to take the proper action. The base
station is a mote connected to a PC on a universal serial
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bus (USB) port that acts as a gateway for the rest of the
motes. When it receives measurement values, it forwards it
to the PC where a Java application receives the data and
stores them in a MySQL database [21] for post-processing
(Fig. 4).
The displayed results contributed by the Java application or
by the web site will allow the user to view maps, tables and
graphs in a comprehensible form to ease decision making
like where the irrigation amount will be delivered as the
season progresses. With this solution, the decision whether
to irrigate or not is no longer a matter of guessing and just
looking at the crop. With the soil sensors, it becomes
possible to know exactly what is happening in the zone
where it matters: inside the soil where the roots from the
crop should take their water.
8 Retrieved data from nodes
The data received from the moisture sensor is composed of
different fields as presented in Fig. 5.
To obtain the soil moisture value, we need to convert the
voltage value that was read with the VH400 sensor. The
conversion is made by using a formula given in the
datasheet (Table 1).
Depending on the sensor output, the value of soil moisture
can be calculated from this table. For example, if the sensor
gives 1.2 V it is in the range between 1.1 and 1.3 V. So the
value of the water content will be: VWC = 25 × 1.2 − 17.5
= 12.5%.
The same steps are used to obtain the soil temperature, but
with a different conversion table provided by the datasheet.
The weather data are classified by the fields shown
in Fig. 6. The internal voltage sensor uses the
microcontroller’s 12 bit ADC. To convert the raw value of
the ADC to the corresponding voltage, it is necessary to
perform the calculation
voltage = value/4096 × Vref
where Vref = 1.5 V. The internal voltage sensor monitors
Vcc/2, so we have to multiply the resulting voltage value by
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Fig. 3 Entire irrigation system deployed based on wireless star network

Fig. 4 SW/HW components

Fig. 5 Packet from VH400 moisture sensor

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Fig. 6 Packet from sensor integrated in the TelosB
Fig. 7 Interface ‘displaying soil parameter’
Fig. 8 System on field tested
2 to obtain the mote’s supply voltage (Vcc). In our example
raw value = 0 × 0FFF = 4095 (in decimal)
voltage = (4095/4096) × 1.5 × 2 ≃ 2.9993 V
Humidity and temperature sensors are located in the external
Sensirion® SHT11 sensor. The Hamamatsu® S1087 sensor
provides visible light values. They are directly connected to
the microcontroller’s ADC. The specific data can be
calculated using the formula given with the datasheet of the
TelosB mote. The system is created for easy use with no
need to obtain a specific knowledge to understand its
functions.
9 Computer part
Throughout the operation of the system, the levels of moisture
and temperature of the soil node and the levels of some
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environmental parameters of the weather node are
forwarded to the base station by the corresponding motes.
The base station is a mote connected to a PC on a USB
port that acts as a gateway for the rest of the motes. When
it receives a measurement value, it forwards it to the PC
where a Java application receives the data and stores it in a
MySQL database for post-processing. The implementation
of the system has been handled out successfully, so the
farmer can control the amount of water needed in the field
with two manners: displaying data into Java application if
he is in the farm or from a web site if he is outside. Thus,
making a decision will be faster and easier (Fig. 7).
Human–machine interface (HMI) equipment provides a
control and visualisation interface between a human and a
process, machine, application or appliance. HMIs allow the
user to control, monitor, diagnose and manage an
application. HMI is a key element in the use of any
embedded system. In theory, a HMI must be ergonomic as
well as effective. In addition, these interfaces must be easy
to use and receptive to the user’s needs. This application
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also provides a histogram (moisture and temperature). So it
facilitates and simplifies the reading of data.
The farmer has the possibility to save or print desired data.
He clicks on the option Save found in the File menu or on the
saving button; data will be saved as an Excel table. Same
functionalities contributed with a Java application are
offered by the web application.
10 Experimental results
For testing the system, we used a small field which is a
pot from the laboratory. As each plant has its particular
parameters, we concentrated our tests on a small plant
known as a spider plant. We pictured the real system
in Fig. 8.
To understand the system’s behaviour facing climatic
changes, we have studied the need of the spider plant in
water, temperature, light and fertiliser [22].
The tested plant is undemanding for water. It prefers bright
light and tends towards scorching in direct sunlight. However,
it will grow in conditions ranging from semi-shady to partial
direct sun, which means that the light must be established
between 269.1 and 807.3 lux. In summer, this plant should
be watered liberally, but during the winter we have to cat
watering back. The spider plant does not resist below 50°F
(10°C) or in cold drafts. The air temperature must be kept
between 40 and 85°F (4.5–29.5°C). Spider plants like
fast-draining, well-aerated potting mix. When the soil
moisture is below 10%, we need to apply irrigation.
Understanding the plant’s needs help us to compare the
retrieved data from sensors (Table 2).
Reading the experimental results shows that the plant is
well irrigated and its demands on water are well respected.
If any of the experimental results exceed the threshold of
the studied parameter, the system will alert the farmer about
this problem to make the appropriate decision.
11 Conclusions
Managing water is a crucial task in the agriculture field
because its availability for agriculture is a global challenge
for the upcoming years.
A complete irrigation solution based on a WSN has been
designed with the appropriate technology and components
that satisfy many engineering design constraints such as
economic or energy. In this project, we presented the
architecture and the implementation of an automated
irrigation system based on WSN. Remotely monitored
embedded systems for irrigation purposes have become a
new necessity for farmers to save energy, time and money.
This system is composed of three nodes; each node is
composed from the TelosB mote and adequate sensors. The
soil node will be used to measure soil moisture and soil
temperature, the weather node is used to measure
environmental parameters such as the air temperature, the
air humidity, the wind speed and brightness. The last node
is connected to an actuator which allows the controlling of
the opening of the irrigation valve if necessary. The data
from each node are being transmitted to the base station
where it will be recorded and sent to the farmer’s PC just in
time to allow him to take the proper action. The big
advantage of this system is that the farmer does not need to
understand the technical details of the device. By using web
or Java application, the farmer does not need to have
knowledge about IEEE standards, wireless connection or
IET Sci. Meas. Technol., 2014, Vol. 8, Iss. 3, pp. 98–106
doi: 10.1049/iet-smt.2013.0137
www.ietdl.org
anything. The application is very simple to use even if the
farmer does not have knowledge of WSN. In future work,
we plan to use solar panels along with rechargeable
batteries in order to make the system self sustainable in
terms of energy consumption. Moreover, instead of sending
data to a farmer’s PC, the control of the system will be
possible with smart phones, so the system will be more
flexible and efficient. The proposed system is a low-cost
system where information is exchanged via SMS on GSM
network.
To complete the control of a whole farm, we will try to
implement the nodes in the entire agricultural field, like
green house, machinery and animals.
12 References
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4 Mahir, D., Semih, O.: ‘A wireless application of drip irrigation
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105
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2014
www.ietdl.org
Appendix
See Table 3.

Table 3 Total cost of the entire system

Names Part numbers Descriptions Suppliers Quantities Prices

TelosB 2.4 GHz TPR2420CA IEEE 802.15.4 TelosB mote with crossbow 3 77 €
sensor suite
VH400 soil moisture sensor VH400-2M soil moisture sensor – 2 m cable vegetronix 1 28.9 €
temperature sensor – waterproof SEN-11050 water temperature sensor maxim 1 7.48 €
(DS18B20) integrated
CPF series inline irrigation valve CPF-100 1″ FPT inline electric valve rain bird 1 16.5 €
valve size: 1″ (25 mm)
vortex wind sensor, 25′ INSPEED 1 41.38 €
Total 325.26 €

106 IET Sci. Meas. Technol., 2014, Vol. 8, Iss. 3, pp. 98–106
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2014 doi: 10.1049/iet-smt.2013.0137

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