Autonomous sensor network for rural agriculture environments, low cost, and energy self-charge

Abstract

Over the last years, existing technologies have been applied to agricultural environments, resulting in new precision agriculture systems. Some of the multiple profits of developing new agricultural technologies and applications include the cost reduction around the building and deployment of them, together with more energy-efficient consumption. Therefore, agricultural precision systems focus on developing better, easier, cheaper, and overall more efficient ways of handling agricultural monitoring and actuation. To achieve this vision, we use a set of technologies such as Wireless Sensor Networks, Sensors devices, Internet of Things, or data analysis. More specifically, in this study, we proposed a combination of all these technologies to design and develop a prototype of a precision agriculture system for medium and small agriculture plantations that highlights two major advantages: efficient energy management with self-charging capabilities and a low-cost policy. For the development of the project, several prototype nodes were built and deployed within a sensor network connected to the cloud as a self-powered system. The final target of this system is, therefore, to gather environment data, analyze it, and actuate by activating the watering installation. An analysis of the exposed agriculture monitoring system, in addition to results, is exposed in the paper.