Remote Monitoring System for Intelligent Irrigation in Hybrid Wireless Sensor Networks

Aiming at make effective use of variables control, wireless sensor and monitoring, embedded and wireless communications technology in industrial fields to make intelligent precision irrigation in crops the article designed a closed-loop remote monitoring system of distributed precision irrigation by using Citect configuration software, hybrid sensor networks including wireless sensor networks (WSN) and wireless underground sensor networks (WUSN), ARM9 microprocessor and General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) module. The system consists of monitor computer, irrigation monitor controller, wireless sensor networks, GPRS wireless communication module and valves, in which the wireless sensor networks adopt hybrid topology above and below ground, the controllers utilizes embedded technology to control irrigation water yield that applied to each specific unit according to soil water content. The Citect configuration is used to manage data and HMI by the remote monitoring center, which can conduct a more high-level monitoring through web publishing. The results showed that the data sampling interval is set for 30 min, 4 groups WSN nodes were chosen, which the system could get soil temperature, humidity and soil water content in 5cm and 35cm depth, intelligent irrigation can save water about 25% compare with normal irrigation. This system realizes online automatic monitoring of crop precise irrigation, a hybrid wireless sensor network model for both aboveground and underground is creatively established, which is also the foundation for further study.