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Development of a Sensor Node for Precision Horticulture

2009; Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute; Volume: 9; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3390/s90503240

1424-8220

Juan Antonio López, F. Soto, Pedro Sánchez, Andrés Iborra, Juan Suardíaz Muro, Juan A. Vera,

Water Quality Monitoring Technologies

This paper presents the design of a new wireless sensor node (GAIA Soil-Mote) for precision horticulture applications which permits the use of precision agricultural instruments based on the SDI-12 standard. Wireless communication is achieved with a transceiver compliant with the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. The GAIA Soil-Mote software implementation is based on TinyOS. A two-phase methodology was devised to validate the design of this sensor node. The first phase consisted of laboratory validation of the proposed hardware and software solution, including a study on power consumption and autonomy. The second phase consisted of implementing a monitoring application in a real broccoli (Brassica oleracea L. var Marathon) crop in Campo de Cartagena in south-east Spain. In this way the sensor node was validated in real operating conditions. This type of application was chosen because there is a large potential market for it in the farming sector, especially for the development of precision agriculture applications.