Abstract
This paper proposes a general wireless sensor network architecture for monitoring horticultural crops that are distributed among small plots scattered at distances of up to 10 km from one another. The technology used for the real implementation of the architecture is based on the B-MAC (Berkeley Medium Access Control) medium access protocol to assure a high degree of sensor node power autonomy. To resolve this issue, a series of specialized sensor nodes (Soil-Mote, Environmental-Mote and Water-Mote) have been developed along with a gateway to interconnect them with the farm central offices. Before starting device development, simulations were conducted to ensure that acceptable performance would be achieved with the selected technology in terms of node autonomy, achieved throughput and delays. To that end, it was necessary to implement the selected B-MAC protocol in the ns-2 (Network Simulator-2) simulation framework. The final system was deployed on a real crop to check and validate the simulation results against experimental results.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the Ministry of Industry, Edosoft Factory S.L., projects RIMSI (FIT-330100-2006-173) and ESNA (ITEA 2006), Fundación Séneca of the Murcia Region (ID-08754/PI/08 and ID-08850/PI/08) and the CICYCT EXPLORE (TIN2009-08572), Ministry of Education and Science, Spain, for supporting this work. This research has been carried out within the framework of a regional programme of aids to groups of excellence in the Region of Murcia (Programa de Ayudas a Grupos de Excelencia de la Región de Murcia, de la Fundación Séneca, Agencia de Ciencia y Tecnología de la RM). The authors also gratefully acknowledge the supply of components by Texas Instruments and Maxim for our planned network deployment.
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López, J.A., Garcia-Sanchez, AJ., Soto, F. et al. Design and validation of a wireless sensor network architecture for precision horticulture applications. Precision Agric 12, 280–295 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11119-010-9178-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11119-010-9178-1