World's Largest Agricultural Wireless Sensor Network

About one month ago, the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) issued a statement that they have deployed the world's largest agricultural wireless sensor network. DPI has taken a pro-active approach to the maintenance and building of Victoria's scientific capability and is committed to the provision of high quality, innovative science and technology to create robust primary industries. A project was launched in July 2006 that is to conclude in June 2008 to evaluate sensor network systems and address a variety of environmental and agricultural issues. The area being tested was a nectarine orchard covered with 273 sensors supported by Crossbow's MoteWorks software platform.

Researchers focused on developing Integrated Smart Sensing Systems to develop the capability of DPI to use wireless sensing and microtechnology to improve the agricultural and environmental outcome in  Victoria. The Orchard study is designed to build capability in a long term, spatially dense sensing environment in which a production system operates and its performance is monitored. Led by the plant production sciences platform staff, the field study examined the effect variability in soil moisture over a growing season on the variability in canopy cover and fruit yield.

The major ISSS capability was to be developed by deploying a WSN which would collect soil moisture measurements at three soil depths, at up to 100 locations, each hour for the duration of the study. Additional sensor information was to be gathered by deployment of more sophisticated sensors in smaller numbers. Measurements of the soil structure, canopy density, local climate, irrigation activity and fruit yield were to be made using conventional techniques and would provide supplementary data on the environment and the product of this horticultural system.

The sensor system used for the orchard deployment consisted of a gateway connected to the internet gathering data from the 433MHz MICA2 Mote platform. The data was collected from the 'weather chip' consisting of temperature, humidity, light, wind speed, wind direction, leaf witness and soil moisture sensors. The initial measures of soil variability and tree canopy would aid in increasing the positive output of the production measures in fruit yield and irrigation usage. Daily network health statistic alerts are sent via SMS to a mobile phone. 

Crossbow’s unique wireless networking solution is an industry first in its ability to integrate the latest wireless mesh technology to collect practical environmental data Air Temperature, Relative Humidity, Location (GPS), Ambient Light, Solar Radiation, Barometric Pressure, Precipitation, Soil Moisture/Temperature, etc. Mesh sensor technology allows scalable range extension by node to node sensor communication. This technology has already been proven in numerous applications and is ideal for deployments where multiple sensor nodes are required. The importance of monitoring our physical environment has never been higher. Many groups from agricultural operators to natural resource developers to biological researchers to homeland security, all need to make reliable, sensitive measurements in remote or dispersed locations. Crossbow's XMesh based wireless solutions and low-cost MEMS based sensor capabilities enable breakthrough environmental monitoring performance for our customers.

Comments

[dina omer]

hi i am dina ,this is a great job ,i realy hope that you can send more information to me,thanks