Sensor network for Precision Irrigation monitoring based on embedded systems

Abstract

New methodologies in precision irrigation, aimed at monitoring and controlling the irrigation based on the crop water demand, allow to improve the water use efficiency in the agricultural production process. Measuring the soil water content to determine how much and when to irrigate is one way to control the crop irrigation. This work presents the development and setup of a wireless monitoring net of measurement stations based on embedded systems, that concentrate measurement of soil moisture, pressure in the irrigation lines, and water flow.  A base station coordinates the communication through the net with the measurement stations, saves the data in a local database and then upstream the data to a web server so the information can be remotely accessed. The design of the measurement stations is based on a microcontroller, MC9S08QE32 from NXP, while the base station is based on a Raspberry Pi3.  The communication between the nodes is performed at 470Mhz in a mesh mode configuration. In order to show the performance and reliability of the proposed system, results obtained from three irrigation treatments monitoring in an tomato crop are presented