Wireless Sensor Network for Crop Field Monitoring

This paper presents the design and the implementation of a Wireless Sensor Network that can monitor the air temperature, humidity and ambient light intensity in a crop field. This can help the end users such as farmers in the better understanding of agriculture practices to be adopted for crop management. Since, early detection of plant fires is necessary to prevent high crop damages; a plant fire detection scheme has also been incorporated in the system. The system consists of nodes, which are equipped with small size application specific sensors and radio frequency modules. The sensor data is transmitted via radio frequency link to the centrally localized computer terminal for data logging and analysis. The design also includes an alternative scheme for the storage of sensor data into an EEPROM in case the computer terminal switches OFF like in the case of a power failure. The sensor nodes can additionally be programmed from the computer terminal itself according to the changing needs of farmers, thus preventing the need for a redeployment of the Wireless Sensor Network every time some changes are to be made. The Graphical User Interface has been made very user-friendly keeping in mind that the system will be used predominantly by the farmers. Since energy is the main operating constraint, sleep mode of the core components is utilized. The system design implemented addresses a wide range of agricultural concerns from detecting sensor node failure, retasking the sensor nodes, power management and data reliability considerations. The proposed system has been deployed in a brinjal field and the feasibility of the network is tested by evaluating the field results.