WIRELESS Networking Infrastructure for Greenhouse Management System

Use of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) in agriculture has received great attention in the last years and has been deeply investigated by several authors . Thanks to the use of sensors it is possible to monitor several environmental parameters such as the air temperature, the ground humidity or the concentration of fertilizers. The knowledge of such parameters is of great importance since it allows the farmer to perform the most suitable operations in order to improve the growth of plants, productivity, and reduce costs. Sensors, wired or wireless, are connected to a suitable network which allows data gathering and their use by a suitable management module.

For this kind of applications, there are several advantages offered by a wireless system if compared with a wired one. They can be synthesized inside the concept of flexibility. In fact, the considerable extensions of the cultivated fields and the need of periodically modifying a type of cultivation or to move it from a lot to another one, makes wired systems too rigid and difficult to modify. In this paper we focus on the problems related to the management of a farm made up of several greenhouses. This kind of farms is rather common in Sicily as, favorable weather conditions make economically convenient to use them for the production of firstlings which have an high value on the market and allow big profits. This kind of farms requires a careful management of several parameters, through data acquisition in each greenhouse and their transfer to a control unit which is usually located in a control room, separated from the production area. All these data are processed by a SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) system which, through a continuous variable monitoring, determines the actions to perform periodically. At present, data transfer between the greenhouses and the control system is mainly provided by suitable wired communication system, such as a Fieldbus. In such contexts, even though the migration from the wired system towards a fully wireless one can appear very attractive, Then, sing hybrid wired/wireless technologies appears currently the best trade off solution. The architecture proposed in this paper is based on a hybrid approach. The wireless section is located in the indoor environment where great flexibility is required, especially in the

production area inside each greenhouse. In such a way we can exploit the features related to high scalability, cheapness, simple installation and mobility of devices whose position can be easily modified.

BLOCK DIAGRAM:

Moisture sensor

Actuators

TEMP SENSOR

MICRO CONTROLLER ZIGBEE TRANSMITTER

ZIGBEE RECEIVER

POWER SUPPLY

LEVEL CONVERTER

PERSONAL COMPUTER