Agricultural Environmental Monitoring: A WSN Perspective

Abstract

In this article, we develop a system based on WSN platform to measure the data of crop parameters for the agriculturists aimed to enhance the quality and quality of the crops. The proposed system will minimize the exhaustive field visits of the farmers. This system will facilitate the precision agriculture by measuring three most key parameters (temperature, humidity and light) of the crops. The proposed system consists of IRIS motes MDA100CB data board, and MIB520 USB interface board. These are considered as sink and sensor nodes respectively. TinyOS is used to develop the code for WSN nodes, and GUI device is composed in Microsoft Visual Studio-2008 for displaying the measured data and stored in data base accordingly. ZigBee IEEE 802.15.4 and direct topology are utilized for the correspondence of sensor nodes with the base station

Keywords

• Agricultural Environmental Monitoring
• TinyOS I. INTRODUCTION Modern agriculture system needs electronic devices and technologies that can improve the production efficiency
• production quality
• post-harvest processes
• and would be able to reduce environmental impacts. Automation in agriculture has brought about a fundamental role to what is now known as smart agriculture [7] (also known as precision agriculture) [1
• 2]. Agriculture is the cultivation of animals as well as humans
• although plants and other life forms for food and to make them source
• fiber
• biofuel
• apart from that medical and other products used to put up and to enlarge human life [1]. The main source of livelihood of mankind is agriculture. Agriculture plays vital and crucial role in developing countries including Pakistan; it provides large scale employment to the people. However
• agriculture is highly dependent on climate and weather. For instance
• change in humidity
• temperature and carbon dioxide may result in low yield of cash crops. The most important cash crops are cotton
• wheat
• sugar-cane
• etc. [8]. So
• it is significant to monitor environmental parameters in order to manage crop growth and improve the production
• and latest technology is being implemented in agriculture to save time
• use of fertilizers
• use of pesticides
• to condense human struggles
• Wireless Sensor Network
• Data Acquisition
• TinyOS