Design and development of precision agriculture system using wireless sensor network

Abstract

Crop farming in India is labour intensive and obsolete. Farming is still dependent on techniques which were evolved hundreds of years ago and doesn't take care of conservation of resources. The newer scenario of decreasing water tables, drying up of rivers and tanks, unpredictable environment present an urgent need of proper utilization of water. We have the technology to bridge the gap between water usage and water wastage. Technology used in some developed countries is too expensive and complicated for a common farmer to understand. Our project is to give cheap, reliable, cost efficient and easy to use technology which would help in conservation of resources such as water and also in automatizing farms. We proposed use of temperature and moisture sensor at suitable locations for monitoring of crops. The sensing system is based on a feedback control mechanism with a centralized control unit which regulates the flow of water on to the field in the real time based on the instantaneous temperature and moisture values. The sensor data would be collected in a central processing unit which would take further action. Thus by providing right amount of water we would increase the efficiency of the farm. The farmer can also look at the sensory data and decide course of action himself. We have made the interface of our project keeping in view the educational and financial background of average Indian farmer. In this paper we are proposed a low cost and efficient wireless sensor network technique to acquire the soil moisture and temperature from various locations of farm and as per the need of crop controller take the decision to make irrigation ON or OFF.