2023-09-26 17:45:48
Precision agriculture is a term that defines the management of agricultural production based on observation, data collection and subsequent action, in order to improve crop efficiency, both agronomic, environmental and economic. This agriculture requires advanced technologies to monitor crops and optimize the use of resources to achieve, among other objectives, more efficient irrigation and, ultimately, good crop performance.
Among the technology that precision agriculture requires, Internet of Things (IoT) systems have great potential. Although in some areas such as rural areas its implementation is more complicated, due, among other factors, to the incidence of vegetation. In particular, soil monitoring applications can suffer from interference caused by foliage density or plant height and/or width.
To address this, a team from the UPV (Universitat Politècnica de València) in Spain proposes a new distribution strategy for soil monitoring networks, which allows irrigation to be programmed in the most efficient way possible, also in these areas. These scientists propose a monitoring system that includes the design of the nodes and other components of the system, as well as an algorithm to determine irrigation needs based on FAO recommendations and sensed data.
To get there, they evaluated different wireless sensor network (WSN) deployment configurations, identifying the effects of the rural environment on the signal and the fundamental requirements for the design of these networks. They analyzed their performance with different types of vegetation (orange orchards, bushes and grasslands) and in different locations of the WiFi nodes (on the ground, near the ground and above the ground).
The new distribution strategy for soil monitoring networks allows irrigation to be programmed in the most efficient way possible. (Photo: UPV)
“In the work, we saw that vegetation creates high variability in areas with high foliage density; Sensors installed on the ground had more coverage problems, even with vegetation where most of the foliage is at higher altitudes. Deployments close to the ground are the best in the case of orange trees,” explains Jaime Lloret, university professor in the Department of Communications and director of the Research Institute for the Integrated Management of Coastal Zones (IGIC) of the UPV. However, ground and near-ground deployment strategies in orange groves showed high variability in signal quality, even without any obstacles between the sender and receiver.
“However, aspects of the rural environment and deployment that affect the signal, such as node height, crop type, foliage density or irrigation method, must be taken into account when designing a deployment.” WSN efficiently,” concludes Jaime Lloret. (Source: UPV)
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