Practical deployment of an in-field soil property wireless sensor network

A soil property monitoring system based on wireless sensor network technology (WSN) was developed and deployed in a wheat field. The system included a local WSN with multiple sensor nodes to acquire soil property data, a data sink, and a long-distance cellular network to transmit field data to a remote database. The quality of service of the system was evaluated based on the average packet delivery rate and valid data rate, which were both above 95% for each sensor node during the tests. The system could provide users an easy access of real-time field data.

Research highlights
► Precision agriculture approach is based on field information with high spatial and temporal resolution.
► Wireless sensor network (WSN) is one of the most promising technologies allowing uninterrupted, unsupervised, remote data collection.
► Special issues are involved in the design and development of WSN systems deployed under remote field conditions.
► Interferences from canopy and soil can make significant impact on system reliability.