International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 7 (4.

5) (2018) 370-373

International Journal of Engineering & Technology

Website: www.sciencepubco.com/index.php/IJET

Research paper

A Study on Smart Irrigation System Using IoT for

Surveillance of Crop-Field
Ashwini B V 1
1
Assistant Professor, Dept of ISE, Brindavan College of Engineering, Bangalore
*Corresponding author E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

In India, agriculture plays an important role for development in food production. In our country, agriculture depends on the monsoons
which are not sufficient source of water. So the irrigation is used in agriculture field. Internet of Things (IoT) is a milestone in the evolu-
tion of technology. IOT plays an important role in many fields, one of that is Agriculture by which it can feed billions of people on Earth
in future. The objective of this paper is aiming to overcome this challenge, the whole system is micro control based and can be operated
from remote location through wireless transmission so there is no need to concern about irrigation timing as per crop or soil condition.
Sensor is used to take sensor reading of soil like soil moisture, temperature, air moisture and decision making is controlled by user
(farmer) by using microcontroller. The data received from sensors are sent to server database using wireless transmission. The irrigation
will be automated when the moisture and temperature of the field is reduced. The farmer is notified with the information regarding field
condition through mobile periodically. This system will be more useful in areas where there is scarcity of water and will be worth effi-
cient with satisfying its requirements.

Keywords: Smart Irrigation, Sensors, Bluetooth communication, Android.

tron probe based moisture sensors are very accurate but present
1. Introduction radiation hazards, calibration difficulty and are costly.
A large agriculture field presents is with different part of areas,
In India, where 60-70% economy depends on agriculture, there is hence, moisture measurement at a single locating in the field does
a great need to modernize the conventional agricultural practices not make much sense. Consequently, what is required is a distrib-
for the better productivity. Due to unplanned use of water the uted number of sensor nodes and scattered pumping units to pump
ground water level is decreasing day by day, lack of rains and water to those specific locations covered by the sensor units. An
scarcity of land water also results in decrement in volume of water automated irrigation unit, in conjunction with a low cost moisture
on earth. Nowadays, water shortage is becoming one of the big- sensor, is proposed in this paper.
gest problems in the world. We need water in each and every field.
In our day to day life also water is essential. Agriculture is one of
fields where water is required in tremendous quantity. Wastage of 2. Literature Survey
water is the major problem in agriculture. Every time excess of
water is give to the fields. There are many techniques to save or to 2.1. Automated Irrigation System using WSN and
control wastage of water in agriculture. The objective of the sys- GPRS Module
tem is to a) conserve energy & water resources b) handles the
system manually and automatically c) detects the level of water. Automated Irrigation system using WSN and GPRS Module hav-
Due to the climatic changes and lack of precision, agriculture have ing main goal is that optimize use of water for agriculture crops[1].
resulted in poor yield as compared to population growth. Irrigation This system is composed of distributed wireless sensor network
is mostly done using canal systems in which water is pumped into with soil moisture and temperature sensor in WSN. Gateway units
fields after regular interval of time without any feedback of water are used to transfer data from sensor unit to base station, send
level in field. This type of irrigation affects crop health and pro- command to actuator for irrigation control and manage data of
duces a poor yield because some crops are too sensitive to water sensor unit. Algorithm used in system for controlling water quan-
content in soil. tity as per requirement and condition of filed. It is programmed in
A smart irrigation system, contrary to a traditional irrigation microcontroller and it sends command through actuator to control
method, regulates supplied water. The feedback mechanism of a water quantity through valve unit. Whole system is powered by
smart irrigation system is a moisture sensor and temperature and photovoltaic panels. Communication is duplex take place through
humidity sensor. Evapo - transpiration (ET), thermal imaging, cellular network. Web application manage the irrigation through
capacitive methods, and neutron scattering method and gypsum continuous monitoring and irrigation scheduling programming. It
blocks are some of the technologies that enable moisture sensing. can be done through web pages.
Capacitive sensors, however instantaneous, are costly and need to
be calibrated often with varying temperature and soil type. Neu-

Copyright © 2018 Authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
371 International Journal of Engineering & Technology

2.2. Crop Monitoring System based on WSN 3.2.1. Soil Moisture Sensor

The subsequent section introduces the Bluetooth technology. Soil moisture sensors measure the volumetric water content in
Wireless Sensor network crop monitoring application is useful to soil[11] .Since the direct gravimetric measurement of free soil
farmer for precision agriculture. The application monitors the moisture requires removing, drying and weighing of a sample, soil
whole farm from remote location using Internet Of Things (IOT). moisture sensors measure the volumetric water content indirectly
Application works on sensor netowrk and two types of nodes. by using some other property of the soil, such as electrical re-
Energy saving algorithm is used in node to save energy. Tree sistance, dielectric constant, or interaction with neutrons, as a
based protocol is used for data collection from node to base station. proxy for the moisture content.
System having two nodes one node that collect all environmental
and soil parameter value and the other consist of camera to capture This sensor has two probes through which current passes in soil,
images and monitor crops. In this System Environmental changes then read the resistance of soil for reading moisture level. We
are not considered for sensor reading. System user is not able to known that water make the soil more prone to electric conductivi-
program application. There is no controlling system for applica- ty resulting less resistance in soil where on other hand dry soil has
tion. poor electrical conductivity thus more resistance in soil.

2.3. Automatic Drip Irrigation System using WSN and 3.2.2. Temperature and Humidity Sensor
Data Mining Algorithm
The DHT11 is a basic, ultra low-cost digital temperature and hu-
midity sensor shown in Fig 3. It uses a capacitive humidity sensor
Data mining algorithm are used to take decisions on drip irrigation
and a thermostat to measure the surrounding air, and spits out a
system. Automated drip irrigation system having WSN placed in
digital signal on the data pin.
all over farm and different type of sensors. [9]WSN uses ad hoc
network which gives self configuration and flexibility. Sensor data
It measures relative humidity. Relative humidity is the amount of
is given to base station and data is received using zigbee. Data
water vapor in air vs. the saturation point of water vapor in air. At
processing is done at base station for decision making. Data min-
the saturation point, water vapor starts to condense and accumu-
ing algorithm is used to take decision on data from sensor to drip.
late on surfaces forming dew. It detects water vapor by measuring
All observation are remotely monitor through web application.
the electrical resistance between two electrodes.
This system works on Naïve Bayes algorithm for irrigation control.
Algorithm works on previous data set for decision making if any
3.2.3. Bluetooth Wireless Technology
attribute is not frequent result is zero[11].
Bluetooth is a high-speed, low-power microwave wireless link
3. Components technology, designed to connect phones, laptops and other porta-
ble equipment together with little or no work by the use. Unlike
3.1. Arduino Microcontroller infra-red, Bluetooth does not require line-of-sight positioning of
connected units. The technology uses modifications of existing
Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to- wireless LAN techniques but is most notable for its small size and
use hardware and software[5][4]. Arduino boards are able to read low cost shown in Figure 2. The current prototype circuits are
inputs – light on a sensor, a finger on a button – and turn it into an contained on a circuit board 0.9cm square, with a much smaller
output – activating a motor, turning on an LED. A microcontroller single chip version in development. The fundamental strength of
is a small computer on a single integrated circuit. In modern ter- Bluetooth wireless technology is the ability to simultaneously
minology, it is a system on a chip. It contains one or more CPUs handle data and voice transmissions, which provides users with a
along with memory and programmable input / output peripherals. variety of innovative solutions.
Microcontrollers are designed for embedded application. There are
used in automatically controlled products and devices, such as
automobile engine control systems, implantable medical devices,
remote controls, office machines and other embedded systems[4].

Fig .2 . Bluetooth Device

This technology achieves its goal by embedding tiny, inexpensive,

short-range transceivers into the electronic devices that are availa-
ble today. The radio operates on the globally-available unlicensed
radio band, 2.45 GHz, and supports data speeds of up to 721 Kbps,
Fig. 1:. Arduino Microcontroller
as well as three voice channels. Each device has a unique 48-bit
Fig.1 shows Arduino microcontroller were the Arduino board can address from the IEEE 802 standard. Connections can be point-to-
communicate at various baud rates. A baud is a measure of how point or multipoint. The maximum range is 10 meters but can be
many times the hardware can send 0’s and 1’s in a second. The extended to 100 meters by increasing the power. Bluetooth devic-
software used by the arduino is Arduino IDE. es are protected from radio interference by changing their fre-
quencies arbitrarily upto a maximum of 1600 times a second, a
technique known as frequency hopping.
3.2. Sensors
Moreover, Bluetooth devices won’t drain precious battery life.
In this system two sensors are used in order to obtain the data
The Bluetooth specification targets power consumption of the
about the soil and environmental conditon, soil moisutre sensor
device from a hold mode consuming 30 micro amps to the active
and temperature and humidity sensor.
transmitting range of 8-30 milliamps.
International Journal of Engineering & Technology 372

Bluetooth device uses radio waves instead of wires or cables to

connect to a phone or computer. A Bluetooth product, like a head-
set o watch, contains a tiny computer chip with a Bluetooth radio
and software that makes it easy to connect. When two Bluetooth
devices want to talk to each other, they need to pair. Communica-
tion between Bluetooth devices happens over short-range, ad hoc
networks known as piconets. A piconet is a network of devices
connected using Bluetooth technology. When a network is estab-
lished, one device takes the role of the master while all the other
devices act as slaves. Piconets are established dynamically and
automatically as Bluetooth devices enter and leave radio proximity.
The sensors are connected to the Arduino board. These hardware
communicate via Bluetooth .

4. Proposed System

Irrigation can be automated by using sensors, microcontroller,

Bluetooth, android application as shown in Fig.3. The low cost
soil moisture sensor and temperature and humidity sensor are used.
They continuously monitor the field. The sensors are connected to
arduino board. The sensor data obtained are transmitted through
wireless transmission and are reached to the user so that he can
control irrigation.
The mobile application can be designed in such a way to analyze
the data received and to check with the threshold values of mois-
ture, humidity and temperature. The decision can be made either Fig:4:: Sequence Diagram for the automatic irrigation
by the application automatically without user interruption or man-
ually through application with user interruption. If soil moisture is The Arduino board is programmed using Embedded C in order to
less than the threshold value the motor is switched ON and if the control the transmission of sensor data and the working of motor
soil moisture exceeds the threshold value the motor is switched according to the decision made. The coordination of the motor and
OFF. 3 sensors is maintained by the program fed into the arduino. Water
The sensors are connected to the Arduino board. These hardware is supplied to 3 different areas by using Servo Motor, motor that
communicate through wireless Bluetooth transmission so that user can move its head at different angles. Using this, the head of the
can access the data through his mobile that has an android applica- motor is made to move at 3 different angle so that water can be
tion which can get the sensor data from the arduino via Bluetooth. supplied at different areas where the sensors are placed. The sen-
As far as cost of device is considered Bluetooth technology is used sors continuously send data regarding moisture content of the soil.
which can be replaced by wi-fi. motor is switched OFF. Whichever sensor indicates low moisture content to that place
motor is switched on and then water is pumped, if it indicates high
moisture content pumping of water is stopped by switching of the
motor. All these are managed by the program that has been written
into the Arduino Microcontroller. The coordination of all the
components are shown in the figure 4.

The Arduino and the user communicate via Bluetooth. The range
of Bluetooth technology is application specific.The threshold val-
ues for both soil moisture and temperature and humidity, will be
set and stored in the arduino and mobile application. The sensor
value varies according the climatic conditions. The soil moisture
will be different in summer and winter seasons and so the temper-
ature and humidity values. The threshold value is fixed after con-
sidering all theses environmental and climatic conditions.
The motor will be switched on automatically if the soil moisture
value falls below the threshold and vice versa.
The farmer can even switch on the motor from mobile using mo-
bile application.
The irrigation system is automated once the control received from
the mobile application. Through Bluetooth the decision is sent to
the arduino and accordingly the motor switches are operated.
The ultrasonic sensor is used to monitor water level in reservoir.
The ultrasonic sensor work based on the piezoelectric method. It
has trigger pin and echo pin. The trigger pin act as transmitter and
the echo pin is a reflector. The trigger pin sends ultrasonic waves
once it started functioning. The ultrasonic waves once it started
functioning. The ultrasonic waves hit the water and reflected to-
Fig.3:.System Architecture wards the echo pin. The duration to receive the echo is calculated
and that indicates the water level.
The duration is converted to the distance using the following equa-
tion (1) and (2).
Distance in cm = (duration/2) / 29.1 (1)
 373 International Journal of Engineering & Technology

Distance in inches = (duration/2) / 74 (2) works, Computers And Electronics In Agriculture “0168-1699/
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The automated irrigation system implemented was found to be nologies (ICCIT-2016) held at Cambridge Institute of Technology,
feasible and cost effective for optimizing water resources for agri- Bangalore, on May 20, 2016.
culture production. This irrigation system allows cultivation in
places with water scarcity thereby improving sustainability.
The irrigation system helps the farmer by making his work smarter.
As the demand for water increases, along with the need to protect
aquatic habitats, water conservation practices for irrigation need to
be effective and affordable. As multiple sensors are used water
can be provided only to the required area of land.
This system reduces the water consumption to greater extent. It
needs minimal maintenance. The power consumption has been
reduced very much. The crop productivity increases and the wast-
age of crops are very much reduced.
The extension work is to make user interface much simpler by just
using SMS messages for notifications and to operate the switches.

Acknowledgement
Authors wish to thanks the management of Brindavan College of
Engineering and Reva University, Bangalore for their support.

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