Smart Irrigation using wireless sensor networks
1st Parvu Andreea1, 2nd Botea Lavinia2
1 Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technology, Bucharest
e-mail: andreeamihaela.parvu@yahoo.com, botealavinia@gmail.com
Abstract - This paper focus on a state-of-the-art assessment
of smart irrigation solutions based on wireless sensor
networks. Wireless sensor networks are used in many areas
including smart irrigation. The paper deals with different
solutions for the irrigation system based on wireless
networks. One of the solutions is to control the flow and
direction of water through the pipe with the soil moisture
sensor, while others are based on controlling the valves
depending on the plant type, the soil and the season. All
these solutions have the purpose to automate the irrigation
systems (they are controlled remotely), bringing an
improvement for crop irrigation system
Keywords—smart irrigation, wireless sensor networks, crops
I. INTRODUCTION
Playing an important role in the economy of most nations,
agriculture is the major source of food production to the
growing demand of human population. Irrigation is an essential
process in agriculture that influences crop production. Generally
farmers visit their agriculture fields periodically to check soil
moisture level and based on requirement water is pumped by
motors to irrigate respective fields.
Most often, the water provided by natural precipitation is not
enough to provide the amount of water needed by the plants for
a healthy growth. Currently, agriculture consumes about 70% of
the fresh water [1]. Farmer need to wait for certain period before
switching off motor so that water is allowed to flow in sufficient
quantity in respective fields. This irrigation method takes lot of
time and effort particularly when a farmer need to irrigate
multiple agriculture fields distributed in different geographical
areas. Nowadays farmers need to manage their agricultural
activity along with other occupations.
Automation in irrigation system makes farmer work much
easier. Therefore,smart irrigation provides a better quality of life
for farmers by introducing automated irrigation control for
crops. Sensor based automated irrigation system provides
promising solution to farmers where presence of farmer in field
is not compulsory. The current paper addresses this issue by
introducing smart irrigation via the use of wireless sensor
networks to ensure that farmers use only the required volumes
of irrigation water. [2]
II. APPLICATIONS
1) A Low Cost Smart Irrigation Control System using the
soil moisture sensor
This project is a prototype for fully automation accessing of
irrigation motor where Prototype includes number of sensor
node placed in different directions of farm field. Each Sensors
are integrated with a wireless networking device and the data
received by the “ATMEGA-328” microcontroller which is on a
“ARDUINO-UNO” development board. The RASPBERRY-Pi
is use for send messages through internet correspondence to the
microcontroller process. For experimentation Indian engineers
have abstracted number of soil moisture sensor used in different
direction of the farm fields. The soil moisture in each direction
of field is sensed by sensor node and the sensed data is sent to
microcontroller node through wireless networking device. On
receiving sensor value the controller node checks it with
required soil moisture value. When soil moisture in a particular
field is not up to required level then controller node switch on
the motor to irrigate associated field and the RASPBERRY-Pi
process all data and notification SMS is send to registered
mobile phone which is registered in RASPBERRY-Pi. The
RASPBERRY-Pi is monitoring with a screen to see the current
status of the irrigation and use for change the setting of user
required. [3]
There are different types of method for irrigating farm field
for different types crop field. Basically Indian farmer use three
methods channel system (a traditional method of irrigation),
sprinkler system, drip system.
Above these three systems are generally operate by a user but
a smart irrigation tells that the total system is controlled by
autonomous mean automatically control the total irrigation
system whether the farmer is not present his farm field and send
messages to the farmer about the information of farm field and
change in operation of the farm field. Which require no worker
for operating, and also less waste of water with compared to
previous three methods.
Figure 1 - Smart Irrigation System
This system contains the following components: a soil
moisture sensor, an Arduino (a microcontroller board based on
the ATmega328), the Raspberry-pi (a small, powerful and
lightweight ARM based computer which can do many of the
things a desktop PC can do) and an Electro magnetic valve.
Figure 2 – Functional Block Diagram
Soil moisture sensors are used to sense the moisture level in
soil and send the data to wireless network device and the data
from network device send to ARDUINO-UNO where the
percentage of dryness is calculated. The value of dryness fed to
the Raspberry-Pi to control the electromagnetic valve and
operate motor. User knows the status of the farm field through a
message to the registered mobile number. The RASPBERRY-Pi
is used for control the irrigation system and connects with
internet to send data to the registered mobile number. Automatic
message sending is developed using python programming in
raspberry-pi. If the farmer is far away from his field he always
update with his field status through mobile message or Gmail.
The raspberrypi check the condition in which direction of the
farm field is dry then it open the electromagnetic valve at the
correspondence direction and then ON the pump.
2) Smart Watering System for Gardens using Wireless
Sensor Networks
This project present a smart watering system which could be
deployed in gardens or fields.
In addition, the clay soil have been studied to show the
behaviour of clay soil under different levels of humidity, its
speed of reponse to water and to find out its capability of
holding water for long time periods. Modification of this system
can easily be made to meet with the requirments for soil and
plant types. It can also includes a smart sensing application for
the detection of weather conditions and season.
The implementation of a complete WSN requires several
hardware equipments supplies by MEMSIC in MEMSIC’s
Professional Kit. The motes were programmed in TinyOS by
using nesC programming language. [4]
Working parameters are selected based on the season, to
avoid over-irrigating in winter and underirrigating in sununer.
Also by sensing the soil pressure it can detect the type of the soil
and reselect the parameters for the specific season and the
specific type of soil. This may have a drawback as the program
size will increase significantly to the level that it may not be
supported by WSN nodes and/or it may lead to fast battery
discharge because of the limited processing sizes and
cababilities in the nodes. These problems can be overcome by
making the nodes send these data to the base station connected
to the PC and the application on the PC will choose the working
parameters and send these parameters to the nodes and the
nodes will need to reprogram themselves. Also using solar
panels instead of batteries will make the system self sustainable
in terms of energy consumption.
Also replacing the solenoid valves that need 220 VAC with
valves that can work with DC voltage that could be supplied by
the solar panels or the batteries. Another way is by using a
circuit that can change the voltage fed by the solar panels to AC
voltage to be used by the solenoid valves that require AC
voltage to avoid running wires through the field to the valves
and save the cost of wiring.
If the user can not get the data from the network this would
be a problem and no communication will occur so the system
should alert the user to any degradation occurs in the link
quality between the nodes in the network and this situation
could happen by leavy plants or an animal that has passed on the
node itself which may lead to an antenna defect, so the user can
take action to repair the node or to replace it in another better
place. [5]
The efficiency of this irrigation procedure is not as the same
as the efficiency of common irrigation procedures. By using
wireless sensor networks, the irrigation control can be extended
from just a pot or a set of pots to an entire field which will lead
to a great amount of water saved and consequently reducing the
costs of business projects. A practical evaluation to specify
certain parameters for different types of soil is shown in figure
3.

Figure 3 – Practical evaluation of smart watering system
Defining time periods between sensing the soil, the
irrigation's time, and the waiting time for sensing after the
irrigation have to be optimized experimentally. These
parameters were determined after several observations and
studying the characteristics of the clay soil in the pots. The time
of waiting was chosen to be 2 hours in order to prevent under
irrigation to plants. The period of irrigation determines the
quantity of water that will pass through the valve. It was
selected to be 3 seconds. The waiting time of the sensing after
the irrigation depends on the speed of response of the soil
moisture to the water and on the time delay between a certain
change in the soil's humidity and sensing it. [6] Charts were
needed to know the behavior of the soil. These charts were
obtained in winter. The chart shown in figure 4 shows that the
moisture of the clay soil is stable in the winter and the change in
its moisture level is slow.
Figure 4. A Variation of soil moisture with time during
winter season
Humidity of air is also an important parameter when discussing
agriculture in general. Humidity measurements are important in
greenhouses. Although humidity level of air changes in winter
but it has a low impact on the moisture of the soil as shown in
figure 4.
3) Design and Implementation of Smart Irrigation
System for Groundwater Use at Farm Scale
This project present a smart irrigation system based on a
wireless network of sensors and solenoid electro-valves
distributed that was developed and tested at lab level. The
system was then installed in 15 farms. Each farm is monitored
through TCP/IP connections and connected to the hPC where a
LABVIEW program is running to make decision for irrigating
the fields/crops. The logic used in the program is based on two
soil moisture thresholds; the upper one is used to stop irrigation
and the lower one is used to start irrigation. The control in a
farm is left to master nodes (MN) located in each type of crop.
The parameters of the program running irrigation system can be
modified through the internet (TCP/IP protocol). This
masterslave topology at the farm level in combination with the
tree topology used to connect all farm nodes to the hPCs make
the cost of whole irrigation system lower than that developed in
the literature. [7]
There are various topologies that have been developed and
investigated by different researchers in the past decades. In this
project they consider the tree topology for the overall system
and masterslave topology for the farm level: Topology of the
irrigation system and Xbee Network at the Farm Level.
The soil moisture sensor used in the irrigation system is the
VH400 series soil moisture probe from Vegetronix. This
sensor enables precise monitoring of soil water content.
The PROPOSED IRRIGATION ALGORITHM is designed
based on the measured voltage signal produced by the moisture
sensors and apply calibration formulas to obtain the Volumetric
Water Content (VWC) percentage. [8]

Figure 4 - The algorithm flowchart that runs in a hPC
III. COMPARISION
This paper presents a short description of smart irrigation
concept and a few applications that simulates how the hardware
and software components should be configured.
The first application “A Low Cost Smart Irrigation Control
System using the soil moisture sensor” offers a reliable and low
cost solution for irigation. The experimental results show that
the prototype is capable for automatic controlling of irrigation
motor based on the feedback of soil moisture sensor. This
system is used in a remote area and there are various benefits for
the farmers. Using this type of irrigation system farmers also
save energy. The system is OFF when the field is wet and
automatically starts when the field id dry. This is very low in
cost and easily implement in a farm field.
The efficiency of the second application “Smart Watering
System for Gardens using Wireless Sensor Networks” is not as
the same as the efficiency of common irrigation procedures. By
using wireless sensor networks, the irrigation control can be
extended from just a pot or a set of pots to an entire field which
will lead to a great amount of water saved and consequently
reducing the costs of business projects. Humidity of air is also
an important parameter when discussing agriculture in generla,
so in greenhouses. Although humidity level of air changes in
winter but it has a low impact on the moisture of the soil. Also
seasons play a big role in the irrigation process. In summer,
plants need to be irrigated more often than in winter. This
application, compared to the first one, focused on low power
consumption using wireless sensor networks.
The third application “Design and Implementation of Smart
Irrigation System for Groundwater Use at Farm Scale” proposes
a smart irrigation at farms scale covering field crops as well as
plantation. This application focuses on farm scale, compared to
the other two. It’s a low cost solution for automated precision
irrigation system based on a wireless communication network of
ZigBee modules distributed in certain topology. Zigbee protocol
is adopted as the wireless link technology due to several positive
merits such as very low power consumption and ability to
support message routing similar to TCP/IP networks. The data
shows that the cost per ha depend on the size of the farm but
also on the number of Master Nodes per farm. Each master node
irrigates one type of crop. Thus the number of master nodes is
equal to the number of crop types per farm. So in this case the
cost increases with the number of crops.
IV. CONCLUSION
Crop irrigation has become an increasingly automated
industry with the help of wireless sensor network. This paper
presents three applications that can be implemented to irrigate
the crops farmers for saving water, energy and convenience.
These applications supports a lot of new features of smart
irrigation like checking water temperature, irrigation at fixed
hours, lighting system, renewing energy using solar panels and a
lot of other features.These applications are implemented in real
life and they work as expected.The framework and its all sensor
connections are also available, so anyone who is interested in
turning the irrigation system into a smart one can use these
informations with confidence.
V. REFERENCES
[1] A. Fry. “Facts and Trends, Water”. In World Business
Council for Sustainable Development, Earthprint Ltd, 2005.
[2] Advance in Electronic and Electric Engineering.ISSN 2231-
1297, Volume 4, Number 4 (2014), pp. 341-346Solar Powered
Smart Irrigation System S. Harishankar1, R. Sathish Kumar2
[3] soil moisture estimation using remote sensing (Jeffrey
Walker 11and Paul Houser2)
[4] M.llyas and l.Mahgoub, "Opportunities and Challenges in
Wireless Sensor Networks," in Handbook of Sensor Networks:
Compact Wireless and Wired Sensing Systems, 1 st ed. Florida:
CRC PRESS, 2005, ch. 1.
[5] Grove soil moisture sensor datasheet , 0.9 ed., Grove System
Co., 2011.
[6] MTSIMDA Sensor Board Users Manual, Crossbow
Technology Inc., 2007.

[7] S. Zekri, “Controlling Groundwater Pumping Online,”

Journal of Environmental Management, vol. 90, pp. 3581–3588,
2009

[8] MottMcDonalad, Annual report on water balance in Oman,

May 2013.