IOT based Crop Field Monitoring System

Abstract:
Smart agriculture is an emerging concept, because IOT sensors are capable of providing
information about agriculture fields and then act upon based on the user input. In this Paper,
it is proposed to develop a Smart agriculture System that uses advantages of cutting edge
technologies such as Arduino, IOT and Wireless Sensor Network. The paper aims at making
use of evolving technology i.e. IOT and smart agriculture using automation. Monitoring
environmental conditions is the major factor to improve yield of the efficient crops. The
feature of this paper includes development of a system which can monitor temperature,
humidity, moisture and even the movement of animals which may destroy the crops in
agricultural field through sensors using Arduino board and in case of any discrepancy send a
SMS notification as well as a notification on the application developed for the same to the
farmer’s smartphone using Wi-Fi/3G/4G. The system has a duplex communication link based
on a cellular Internet interface that allows for data inspection and irrigation scheduling to be
programmed through an android application. Because of its energy autonomy and low cost,
the system has the potential to be useful in water limited geographically isolated areas.
1. Introduction:
India has agriculture as its primary occupation. According to IBEF (India Brand Equity
Foundation), 58% of the people living in rural areas in India are dependent on agriculture. As
per the Central Statistics Office 2nd advised estimate, the contribution of agriculture to the
Gross Value Addition (India) is estimated to be roughly around 8% which is very significant
contribution. Under such a scenario, the usage of water especially the fresh water resource by
agriculture will be enormous and according to the current market surveys it is estimated that
agriculture uses 85% of available freshwater resources worldwide, and this percentage will
continue to be dominant because of population growth and increased food demand. This calls
for planning and strategies to use water sensibly by utilizing the advancements in science and
technology. There are many systems to achieve water savings in various crops, from basic
ones to more technologically advanced ones. One of the existing systems use thermal
imaging to monitor the plant water status and irrigation scheduling. Automation of irrigation
systems is also possible by measuring the water level in the soil and control actuators to
irrigate as and when needed instead of predefining the irrigation schedule, thus saving and
hence utilizing the water in a more sensible manner. This population growth especially in
water short countries will directly have an impact on its growth on the world map. The food
production needs to be increased by at least 50% for the projected population growth.
Agriculture accounts for 85% of freshwater consumption globally.
2. Literature Survey
a. Existing System:
The work proposed in [6] provides the use of IOT in almost Fig. 1. Hardware block
diagram. all phases like growing, harvesting, packaging, transportation. Real time
data provided by sensors, RFID tags in all the above phases of cultivation of crop will
help farmers and all the stake holders to have complete view of the product right from
the production to sales.
Automated agriculture system proposed in [7] finds the moisture values from the
moisture sensor and turn the lights in the green house ON or OFF based on light
sensors and actuators are used to control the motor. Automated system definitely
helps farmer in increasing the yield of crops. Paper [8] produces an agricultural model
in IOT environment which is human centric. It incorporates IOT and cloud computing
universally to remove the inadequacy and lack of management, which are the root of
problems in agriculture.

b. Proposed System:
The development of a smart agriculture system using sensors, microcontroller within
an IOT system is presented. The aim of the implementation is to demonstrate the
smart and intelligent capabilities of the microcontroller to allow the decisions to be
taken on watering the plants based on the continuous monitoring of the environmental
conditions in the field. The system is as shown in Fig. 1. It also aims at a predefined
irrigation schedule as per the farmers convenience, uploaded into the application
developed for the same. The implementation is a photovoltaic powered automated
irrigation system that consists of a distributed wireless network of soil moisture and
temperature sensors deployed in plant root zones. These sensors continuously monitor
the parameters and send it to the Arduino board for further processing which acts as
an IOT gateway. This gateway has been given the wireless capability by installing a
WiFi module which will be updating the data to the cloud. The IOT gateway also has
the GSM capability through the module connected. This receiver unit also has a
duplex communication link based on a cellular-Internet interface, using general
packet radio service (GPRS) protocol, which is a packet-oriented mobile data service
used in 2G and 4G cellular global system for mobile communications (GSM).
3. System Requirements and Specifications:

The system architecture consists of a Arduino Uno R3 microcontroller board, sensors like
LM 35 temperature sensor, humidity, moisture and motion sensor, a Wi-Fi module i.e.
ESP8266 and a GSM module as shown in Fig. 3. The software consists of an android
application which includes setting up of the profile for predefined irrigation based on the
seasons or on daily and weekly mode. The software has also been programmed to send a
notification to the farmer whenever the physical parameters sensed are below the
threshold value and based on the farmers input a control signal will be sent to the Arduino
Uno to either switch ON/OFF the irrigation. The yield of crops is affected by the speed
with which the wind blows also. This is also measured in our developed system. For
capturing data in real time from the sensors, a RTC module is also incorporated. This data
is then transmitted to the IOT gateway. The IOT gateway then transmits the data to the
cloud using the Wi-Fi module.
4. System Architecture:
The processing phase takes place in the cloud. The cloud consists of a Web Server, a database
where the sensed data is maintained and a decision logic which takes decisions based on the
sensed data. In the information distribution phase, the output of the decision logic will be sent
to the android application and then to the IOT gateway. The end-to-end algorithm of the
smart farming system is given below
Start
◦ Continuously acquire sensor data
◦ A/D conversion of the sensed data on the Arduino Board
◦ Send the data to the cloud through the IOT Gateway
◦ If the data is above the threshold
Send a notification to the Smart Farming Application
If user selects Turn ON
• Send a control signal to the server i.e. cloud
• Control signal is then sent to the IOT gateway
• The IOT gateway triggers the relay and the water pump is turned ON
Else if user selects turn OFF
• Send a control signal to the server i.e. cloud
• Control signal is then sent to the IOT gateway
• The IOT gateway triggers the relay and the water pump is turned OFF
Endif ◦ Else
Continue checking for the threshold condition
◦ Endif End
5. References:
1. Sinung Suakanto, Ventje J. L. Engel, Maclaurin Hutagalung, Dina Angela, “Sensor
networks data acquisition and task management for decision support of smart
agriculture,” in 2016 International Conference on Information Technology Systems
and Innovation (ICITSI) Bandung – Bali, pp. 24–27, Oct. 2016.
2. Chetan Dwarkani M, Ganesh Ram R, Jagannathan S, R. Priyatharshini “Smart
agriculture system using sensors for agricultural task automation,” in 2015 IEEE
International Conference on Technological Innovations in ICT for Agriculture and
Rural Development (TIAR 2015).
3. Nikesh Gondchwar, R. S. Kawitkar, “IOT based smart agriculture,” International
journal Of Advanced research in computer and Communication Engineering
(IJARCCE), vol. 5, no. 6, Jun. 2016.
4. Narayut Putjaika, Sasimanee Phusae, Anupong Chen-Im, Phond Phunchongharn and
Khajonpong Akkarajit Sakul, “A control system in intelligent agriculture by using
arduino technology,” in Fifth ICT International Student Project Conference(ICT-
ISPC), 2016.
5. Tejas Bangera, Akshar Chauhan, Harsh Dedhia, Ritesh Godambe, Manoj Mishra,
“IOT based smart village,” InternationalJournal of Engineering Trends and
Technology (IJETT), vol. 32, no. 6, Feb. 2016, ISSN: 2231- 5381