Third National Conference on Modern Trends in Electronic Communication & Signal Processing 2013

Monitoring and Controlling the Crop Field using Zigbee Network
A. Rohit Yadav, B. Bhavani
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering MVSR Engineering College, Nadergul, Hyderabad bhavani.pitchuka@gmail.com, rohit47474@gmail.com

Abstract: Modern agricultural management relies strongly on many different sensing methodologies to provide accurate information on crop, soil, climate, and environmental conditions. Almost every sensing technique may find an application in agriculture. A real time crop field monitoring and controlling system is implemented using Zigbee network in the present study. Experiments were carried out at lab scale to sense the temperature, humidity, water level, pH level and fire detection. Based on the information received by the user through GSM, an action of control can be taken from any place. Keywords: Wireless Sensing Network, Zigbee, Agricultural Field Monitoring 1. Introduction Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of spatially distributed autonomous devices which use sensors to monitor physical or environmental parameters such as temperature, sound, vibration and pressure. An application of WSN in agriculture field is Greenhouse monitoring [1-3]. Temperature and humidity, which play a vital role in determining the quality and productivity of crops, are controlled inside the commercial greenhouses using WSNs. WSNs have also played a critical role in the detection of forest fires and plant fires [4-6]. In a WSN system, it is necessary to analyse the application requirements such as wide application area to acquire more distributed data for spatial analysis in precision agriculture, low power consumption, low-rate sensing, reliable and flexible communication, remote management and low cost [7]. A WSN (wireless sensor network) generally consists of base station (or) gateway that can communicate with a number of wireless sensors via a radio link. Power unit produces the power. Data Processing unit have the microcontroller, which is the fully responsible to get sensed data and transmit over the other network. The microcontroller performs tasks, processes data and controls the functionality of other components in the sensor node. Sensing unit has the sensors and analog to digital converter (ADC) to convert analog sensed signal to digital signal. 2. Zigbee Technology Zigbee technology is a wireless communication standards based on IEEE820.15.4 agreement. It relates to network, Safety, application etc. It is the wireless communication technology that has the merit of short distance, simple structure, low power consumption, low data transfer rate, low cost, and high reliability. The complete Zigbee technology agreement made up by Application layer, Network layer, Data link layer and Physical layer, it can transport more than 10m, the frequency band are 2.4GHz and 900MHz, they are all free. The transmission rate is 1 0-250kb/s, network architecture has Master/Slave characteristic and it can worked as Two-way communication for public use. Zigbee technology depends on its simple architecture, low price and low power consumption to prolong the life [8-9]. Although Zigbee technology transfer rate is not high, but for use in sensing and control, Zigbee technology also has great potential. 3. System Components The various sensors sense the physical parameters and pass through A/D converter to

Department of Electronics, BPC College, Kerala

Third National Conference on Modern Trends in Electronic Communication & Signal Processing 2013

obtain the digital signals that are processed by the microcontroller unit. It is then passed to the node for transmission over Wireless network as shown in the Fig.1. The Zigbee node receives the data and scan for available node to transmit the data to the coordinator node. The coordinator receives the data, process it and transmit to the monitoring unit, which is going to be observed by a farmer as shown in Fig. 2.

affected because of over fertilization. To overcome this problem, acid level of the soil can be monitored by the pH sensor. The user will receive message when certain level of pH range is breached.

Figure. 2 Block diagram of receiver section
3.1. Sensing methodology steps

Figure. 1 Block diagram of transmitter section The system module consists of sensing unit which has several types of sensors deployed in the crop field area. Temperature, humidity, water level, pH level and fire are part of the sensing unit, used to monitor the crop field. The data sensed by the sensors from different places of a crop field area is transmitted to the data processing unit which consist of microcontroller from there the data is send to the Zigbee node to transfer the data to the receiver and the Zigbee node at the receiver end gathers the data and pass through the data processing unit. The data processing unit transfers the information to PC. When any of the sensing unit parameters in the collected data exceeds certain range, through Global System of Mobile (GSM) node the alarm is activated or a message is received by the user, indicating the situation in the crop field area. In the sensing unit a water level sensor is present which indicates the water level in the soil. When the level of the water is very low then automatically the motor will be started, but if the water level is medium then user/farmer can start the motor by sending a message through GSM. Crop field is mostly

Fig. 3 shows the sensing methodology of wireless sensor network. Data gathered from different sensors are transmitted to the center coordinator node. From coordinator node, the data are sent to the personal computer. The data is then transmitted to the Control station for decision making process. Actuation and control decision process are based on the sensed data of sensors from the crop field area. 4. Flow Chart The design flow used in the implementation of system is shown in Fig.4 and described in detail as follows:
4.1. Advantages of the system

In this paper, a Zigbee wireless sensor network is used for monitoring the crop field area by deploying water sensors in the land to detect the places where the water level is low. From the results irrigation to that particular place only can be carried out. From the above methodology, water can be conserved and the problem of water logging in the land can be minimized. A humidity sensor is used to sense the weather. The farmer can get an idea about the climatic conditions prevailing around the crop field. If there is any chance for rainfall, the

Department of Electronics, BPC College, Kerala

Third National Conference on Modern Trends in Electronic Communication & Signal Processing 2013

farmer need not irrigate the crop field. Due to this water is conserved and power consumption can be reduced as it is not necessary to run the motors.

Figure. 3 Sensing methodology steps Nowadays in the crops the fertilizer level is increasing, which affects people. By using pH sensors the information about the soil can be obtained and the acid level of the soil can be analyzed. By this the farmer can know at which part of the crop field the fertilizer has to be applied and hence can avoid over fertilization of the crops. Temperature is a randomly varying quantity in the environment of crop field. By using temperature sensors the farmer can detect the temperature, and irrigate the water to the crop field area. Accidents may occur in the crop field. The fire sensor is used to detect the fire accident and a message is sent to the farmer. The farmer can put the fire off by switching on the motor and releasing the water in to the field and make an attempt to protect the crop field from by sending command from mobile before he reaches the field.
4.2. Experimental setup

Figure. 4 Flow chart shows system design flow

Figure. 5 Transmitter section 5. Results and Discussion The result shown in the figures was received from the temperature sensor, humidity sensor, fire sensor, water sensor, pH sensor, which were connected to the coordinator nodes and consequently the coordinator node was

Figs.5-6 shows the experimental set up of transmitter and receiver section respectively.

Department of Electronics, BPC College, Kerala

Third National Conference on Modern Trends in Electronic Communication & Signal Processing 2013

connected to the personal computer. The results were taken at real time in our college lab.

real time. Result shows that zigbee wireless sensor network is efficient for crop field monitoring. A control algorithm can be embedded in sensor node or in central computer to improve the performance of the system.

Figure 6 Receiver Section

Figure 9 Mobile phone screen showing fire alert message

References
[1] M. Mancuso and F. Bustaffa, “A Wireless Sensors Network for Monitoring Environmental Variables in a Tomato Greenhouse,” presented at 6th IEEE International Workshop on Factory Communication Systems in Torino, Italy, pp 107-110, 2006. [2] H. Liu, Z. Meng and S. Cui, “A Wireless Sensor Network Prototype for Environmental Monitoring in Greenhouses,” presented at International Conference on Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing 2007 ( WiCom 2007), pp 2344-2347, 2007. [3] G. J. Timmerman and P. G. H Kamp, “Computerised Environmental Control in Greenhouses,” PTC, The Netherlands, pp 115–124, 2003. [4] A. S. Tanenbaum, C. Gamage, and C. Crispo, “Taking Sensor Networks from the Lab to the Jungle,” IEEE Computer Society, Vol.39(8), pp 98-100, 2006.

Figure. 7 Sensor output display on computer screen

[5] L. Yu, N. Wang, and X. Meng, “Real-Time Forest Fire Detection with Wireless Sensor Networks,” In Proceedings of International Conference on Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing, New York, Vol. 2, pp 1214-1217, 2005. [6] M. Hedeeda, “Forest Fire Modeling and Early Detection using Wireless Sensor Networks,” Technical report CMPT2007, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Canada , 2007. [7] Hui Liu, Zhijun Meng, and Maohua Wang, “A Wireless Sensor Network for Cropland Environmental Monitoring”, presented at Networks Security, Wireless Communications and Trusted Computing (NSWCTC '09), pp 65-68, 2009.

Figure. 8 Message showing low water level in mobile phone

[8] Shahin Farahani, “Zigbee Wireless Networks and Transceivers”, Newness Publications, 2008. [9] Alka Kalra, Rajiv Chechi, and Rajesh Khanna,”Role of ZigbeeTechnology in Agriculture Sector” in NCCI 2010-National Conference on Computational Instrumentation, CSIO Chandigarh, INDIA, pp 151-152, 2010. [10] Khalid EL-Darymli, Faisal Khan, and Mohamed H. Ahmed “Reliability Modeling of Wireless Sensor Network for Oil and Gas Pipelines Monitoring”, Sensor & Transducers Journal, Vol.106(7), pp. 6-26, 2009. [11] K. Nirmal Kumar, R.Prabakaran, V.R. Sarma and Dhulipala,P.Ranjith “Future Sensors and Utilization of Sensors in Chemical Industries with Control of Environmental Hazards”, in ICESD 2011- International Conference on Environmental Science and Development, pp 224-228, 2011. [12] K. Nirmal Kumar, P.Ranjith, and R.Prabakaran, “Real Time Paddy Crop Field Monitoring Using Zigbee Network”, International Conference on Emerging Trends in Electrical and Computer Technology (ICETECT), pp 1136 – 1140, 2011.

A message is also sent to the farmer to his mobile through GSM and it is as illustrated in the Figs. 8-9 6. Conclusion In this paper utilization of sensors in the crop field area is discussed and this gives the proposed architecture for real time crop field monitoring with zigbee wireless sensor network. Analysis of real time readings of temperature, humidity, pH level, water level and fire sensor is given by deploying them in

Department of Electronics, BPC College, Kerala