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Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute

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Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are an invaluable tool in agriculture. Currently these systems are good at reporting and logging data. Some recent work has focused on making the data useful and actionable. The next step in WSNs is the ability to automatically use that data for irrigation control. This can help minimize labor and reduce water usage. This work presents several methods of irrigation control based on WSN’s. Local control methods let each node manage irrigation based on the attached sensors or based on a schedule. Global control lets a central base station signal an individual node to irrigate. Hybrid approaches combine global control with local schedule based control. Model based control is an example of advanced global control where a plant model is used to determine when to irrigate and for how long. This work also explores different irrigation pulse types. Using different pulse types lets growers optimize irrigation by applying water in pulses instead of in a constant flow. This system is currently deployed and being tested in different types of agricultural environments.

Keywords

wireless sensor network, irrigation, control, wsn, actionable, interface, precision, sensorwebs

Notes

Sponsor: USDA-NIFA

Associated Center(s) / Consortia: Field Robotics Center

Associated Project(s): Distributed SensorWebs

Text Reference

David Kohanbash, Abhinav Valada, and George A. Kantor, "Irrigation Control Methods for Wireless Sensor Network," American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Annual Meeting, July, 2012.

BibTeX Reference

@inproceedings{Kohanbash_2012_7086,
   author = "David Kohanbash and Abhinav Valada and George A Kantor",
   title = "Irrigation Control Methods for Wireless Sensor Network",
   booktitle = "American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Annual Meeting",
   month = "July",
   year = "2012",
}

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