Quest Journals

Journal of Software Engineering and Simulation

Volume 8 ~ Issue 7 (2022) pp: 01-08
ISSN(Online) :2321-3795 ISSN (Print):2321-3809
www.questjournals.org

Research Paper

Design and Implementation of a Smart Irrigation System

B.I. Bakare1 , T.C. Ewunonu2 , S.A. Bruce-Allison3 and Ekele Eke4
1, 3
(Department of Electrical Engineering, Rivers State University, Port Harcourt, Nigeria.)
2
(Department of Cyber Security, Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Nigeria.)
4
(First Atlantic Semiconductors and Microelectronics Limited, Owerri, Nigeria.)
Corresponding Author: B.I. Bakare

ABSTRACT: Advancement of technology has led to the automation of Irrigation system which has helped to
solve a lot of problems encountered by the various non-automated types of irrigation syatem. The use of
electronics has made irrigation easier, more efficient and flexible, various automatic irrigation systems has
been developed to help the farmer carry out irrigation. This Research work involves applying electronics and
software engineering as a means of solving the irrigation issues faced by farmers. This paper is limited to the
development of Smart Irrigation System that can be controlled by software application, which also can be used
to monitor irrigation in real time. It makes use of light, temperature, soil moisture sensors, LCD, PIC
microcontroller and it is coded using C++ Programming language. This irrigation system consists of four
different sensors which are used to measure various parameters related to the crop production. They are Light
Dependent Resistor (LDR), Humidity Sensor, Soil moisture Sensor and temperature Sensor. The LDR is used to
determine the intensity of light or the time of the day. This helps the system to regulate the irrigation from time
to time. The Soil moisture sensor is used to determine the moisture. An app that gives the farmer information on
the amount of insolation, temperature and soil moisture level was also incorporated in the system.The smart
irrigation system developed was able to automatically monitor and control the level of water available to the
plants without any human intervention at the farm. This intelligent system is limited to only a single plant or
crop as future study could be extended to monitor a larger portion of land with two or more crops.
KEYWORDS: Bluetooth; Humidity Sensor; Irrigation; Light Dependent Resistor (LDR); Microcontroller,

Received 25 June, 2022; Revised 05 July, 2022; Accepted 07 July, 2022 © The author(s) 2022.
Published with open access at www.questjournals.org

I. INTRODUCTION
Irrigation, is the artificial supply of water to the root of plant. Irrigation has been used to assist in the
growing of agricultural crops, maintenance of landscapes, and re-vegetation of disturbed soils in dry areas and
during periods of inadequate rainfall. In crop production, irrigation helps in protecting plants against frost,
suppressing weed growth in grain fields and preventing soil consolidation. Irrigation systems are also used for
dust suppression, disposal of sewage, and in mining [1]. Irrigation undisputedly has evolved and it is still
evolving and advancing to be a more efficient, easy and flexible process and through the course of time various
methods of irrigation has been introduced, some of the most common types of irrigation include the following;
Surface irrigation, Sprinkler irrigation and Drip Irrigation as shown in Figure 1, Figure 2 and Figure 3
respectively.

Figure 1: Surface Irrigation system

*Corresponding Author: B.I. Bakare 1 | Page
Electrical Engineering Department, RSU, Port Harcourt
 Design and Implementation of a Smart Irrigation System..

Figure 2. Example of Sprinkler Irrigation system

Figure 3: Drip irrigation system.

The requirement of water to the soil depends on soil properties such as soil moisture and soil
temperature. Effective irrigation can influence the entire growth process and automation in irrigation system
using modern technology can be used to provide better irrigation. In general, most of the irrigation systems are
manually operated. These traditional techniques can be replaced with automated techniques of irrigation in order
to use the water efficiently and effectively. The rise in energy demand has outpaced power generation capacity
due to the high increase in population and industries. This calls for management of energy demand to optimize
the usage of the limited generated power. One of the areas where power is so essential is irrigation. There is
always need to pump water to the water tanks and operate the irrigation system such as sprinklers. However,
two scarce and valuable resources of irrigation, i.e. water and energy, are not efficiently utilized by the
traditional irrigation systems. They do not have the means to determine where and when irrigation is required.
Consequently, irrigation is sometimes performed when it is not necessary or delayed when required. This leads
to water/energy waste and low-crop yield, respectively. These challenges can be mitigated if the irrigation
system was able to determine precisely when and where to irrigate.
Good operation of any irrigation system includes matching the irrigation duration with the rate of
application and the intake rate of the soil to maximize the fraction of water stored in the root zone. Operation of
surface irrigation requires being there to “ tend” the water, i.e. to move the water to successive application
points as it reaches the end of the run [2]. The research will be of great benefit to the educators and researchers
since its content contributed to the extension of the frontier of human knowledge by providing an insight into
affordable irrigation system that take advantage of scientific know-how to improve water usage in common
irrigation practices

II. REVIEW OF RELATED WORKS

A lot of research has been done to address the traditional irrigation challenge. In [3], an approach for
integrating precision agriculture and smart grid technologies was presented. This aims at balancing consumption
and generation in the farmland, which increases the sustainability of energy supply. The coordination with the
Smart Grid operator enables farmers to save on energy costs and support grid at peak hours [4]. Consequently,
there is an urgent need to create strategies based on science and technology for sustainable use of water during
irrigation processes.

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 Design and Implementation of a Smart Irrigation System..

2.1 Automated irrigation system using solar power in Bangladesh

The gadget specializes in rice fields in nations depending on agriculture within the economy, such as
Bangladesh. The sensor sends a message from the field to the person approximately the extent of water within
the area if it will increase or decreases then the operator controls the pump to regulate or flip off the irrigation
process. The blessings of this machine are that it depends on the sun energy to get hold of electricity. The
dangers of this system are that it centered on one sort of sensor, the water stage sensor, no matter whether the
plant desires water or not [5].The short-coming of this gadget is taken care of by smart irrigation system using
additional sensors the likes of the temperature and light sensors which gives the micro-controller more
parameters for its decision making so in the case where the temperature is high and there is high level of
insolation the system decides to stop irrigating due to the fact that water supplied to the soil will get easily get
evaporated and at the same saving water.

2.2 Arduino Based Automatic Plant Irrigation System with Message Alert
In this System, soil moisture checks the moisture level of the soil and if the moisture level is low then
the Arduino switches ON a water pump to provide water to the plan. Water pump gets automatically switched
OFF when the soil moisture level gets to the required threshold, when-ever the system is switched ON or OFF, a
message is sent to the user/farmer via GSM module, the system is very useful in gardens and homes and the
whole irrigation process is fully automated [6]. But one of the downsides of this system is that the micro-
controller decides to carry out irrigation based on only one parameter gotten from the in-field sensor which is
the soil-moisture sensor and this can affect the efficiency of the system and there isn’ t any means for the farmer
to control the system remotely. This limitation was solved by introducing more in-field sensors, which helps the
micro-controller make more efficient irrigation decisions and an app was developed that gives the farmer the
ability to monitor and control the irrigation process remotely in the project (smart Irrigation System) being
developed.

2.3 GSM based Automatic Irrigation Control System for Efficient Use of Resources and Crop
Planning by Using an Android Mobile in India
This device works by using Bluetooth or GSM. This device is placed in the agricultural land. The idea
of this device is to monitor the humidity and temperature in the agricultural land in addition to monitoring the
state of the climate through the temperature of the weather and humidity and dew drops after which the device
sends a text message to the user's phone using wireless communication [7]. One of the dis-merits of this system
relates to the inability to control the working process of the system remotely, the farmer gets just information
relating to the irrigation process without been able to control the system.This short-coming was solved in the
project being developed through the development of an app that is able to give the farmer real data o the
irrigation process and also a feature was provided to enable the farmer start and end an irrigation process
irrespective of whether irrigation requirement that was encoded into the micro-controller was met.

III. MATERIALS AND METHOD

3.1 Materials
To achieve the exact project objectives, we decided to use PIC18F4620 as the operating system in this
project (after considering several micro-controllers) because of some of its beneficial features like speed and its
low power consumption and high reliability.The first step of this process of building the prototype of the smart
irrigation system was the choice of materials to be used for the project, research was undertaken to select
materials. Some of the major materials used in the developing the Smart irrigation system include the following;
Switch/Button, LCD (liquid crystal display), Temperature sensor, Light Sensor Light Dependent Resistor
(LDR), Soil moisture sensor, PIC 18F4620 Micro-controller, Valve, Pump and Bluetooth module.
.
3.2 Method
This project is about the design of a smart irrigation system that helps in ensuring that the farm land is
properly irrigated. In this system sensors such as light, temperature and soil moisture sensor were used to
measure the level of insolation, temperature and soil moisture in the farm where the system is installed. The
system is able to carry out irrigation when the soil moisture level is below the optimum level for proper plant
growth and when the farm is fully irrigated the system stops the irrigation process and operation is decided by
the PIC micro-controller, which is the core of the system. The PIC microcontroller is able to communicate with
other components that makes up the system and based on the parameter gotten from the sensors, the micro
controller decides if the farm needs to be irrigated. Fig 4 shows the block diagram of the smart irrigation system
where each block/sub unit of the block diagram is analyzed/designed for interoperability with other connected
blocks so as to ensure the project objectives were met.

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 Design and Implementation of a Smart Irrigation System..

Figure 4.The Irrigation system block diagram

3.2.1 System Implementation

Before live implementation, testing of the developed technique is required. Most of the time, testing
and evaluating the protocols or theories proposed is not practically feasible through real experiments as it would
be more complex, time consuming and even costly. So, to overcome this problem, “ SIMULATORS and
TESTBEDS are effective tools to test and analyze the performance of protocols and algorithms proposed[8]. In
accomplishing this project, certain technologies were applied from start to finish. And some of them are
categorized under the following:
i. Electronic Engineering: Basic electronics (light emitting diodes LEDs, resistors, diodes) components
mounted on the interfaced with the PIC microcontroller, light, temperature and soil moisture sensors.
ii. Programming: C++ was used to feed commands to the microcontroller. It was written in the MPLAB
IDE. The written program was then compiled and burned into the microcontroller using a PICKIT2 programmer
and the app for the smart irrigation system was written in VB.NET language using the visual studio IDE. The
app was developed to run on computers having the windows OS.
iii. Carpentry: For the construction the board for the design layout.

3.2.2 Design Considerations

During the design of the entire system, a lot of factors were put into consideration to ensure we develop
a reliable and effective system. Below are the design considerations we made during the design of this process;
i App Development and Implementation
The app for the smart irrigation system, was written in VB.NET language using the visual studio IDE. The app
developed runs computers having the windows OS. Fig 5 shows the app flowchart which is a pictorial
representation of the functionalities depicting the connectivity in the functionalities as the app executes it
command process.

*Corresponding Author: B.I. Bakare 4 | Page

 Design and Implementation of a Smart Irrigation System..

Fig 5. App flowchart

The efficient and economical way to deploy live implementation is to perform adequate testing of the
developed technique. But the environment to carry out the required test for wired/wireless network is not always
readily available especially for live experimental study which could be very challenging, costly and time
wasting. Hence, the solution is to use “ SIMULATORS, EMULATORS and MODELERS which is a helpful
tool to adequately analyze and test the performance of algorithms and protocols[9]. In the main screen of the
app, the user gets real time data on the level of soil moisture, temperature and amount of insolation and available
in each farm (farm1, farm2, and farm3 respectively) and also the irrigation status. Moreover, the farmer is able
to control the system irrigation process through the start and end irrigation button provided in the software
application for each farm (i.e. the farmer can decide to turn ON/OFF irrigation process for each farm
irrespective of the data gotten from the system). The laptop pairs up with the smart irrigation system via the
Bluetooth module with the app as shown in figure 6. The app interface consists of labels representing each farm,
each parameter been measure by the light, temperature and soil moisture level sensors, water level and irrigation
status for each farm.

*Corresponding Author: B.I. Bakare 5 | Page

 Design and Implementation of a Smart Irrigation System..

Figure 6: App interface

The app follows algorithm meant for it to implement its specifications. The app algorithm is shown thus:
1. Connect to the serial port
2. Connect to the particular Bluetooth device
3. Start timer
4. Check for new data on serial receive buffer
5. Transform the received data to useful format
6. Display the information accordingly
The next step was to assemble all parts together to finalize the project construction and to gather all codes in one
single program and run it in a large-scale project to make sure that everything working well.
Figure 3.10 shows the circuit design of the whole system, which was developed and simulated using proteus
(which is an IDE for developing, testing and simulating proposed circuit designs virtually) and based on this
circuit design the smart irrigation system was built

Figure 7: Circuit Design of the prototype Smart Irrigation system

*Corresponding Author: B.I. Bakare 6 | Page

 Design and Implementation of a Smart Irrigation System..

For the system programming, a program written in C++ language was used to program the
microcontroller. It was written in the MPLAB IDE. The written program was then compiled and burned into the
PIC18F4620 microcontroller using a PICKIT2 programmer

IV RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Results
All the components required for the project were put together following the system block diagram and
circuit diagram. Fig 8 shows the system control box consisting of the PIC-18F4620, capacitors and connection
of the system. There are three farms, each farm comprises of a soil moisture sensor, a light level sensor (LDR)
and a temperature sensor. These sensors measure farm parameters and send it to the microcontroller for
processing. The signals from the sensors are analogue and are converted to digital quantities using the
microcontroller Analogue to Digital Converter ADC; after which values are derived from the sensor reading.
These values are analyzed and used to decide whether to irrigate the farm or not. Fig 8 also shows the LCD
displaying the parameters being measured by the sensors situated in the farm.

Figure 8: The Smart Irrigation Test bed

The measured parameters at the farm is equally being sent by Bluetooth interface to the host computer
for logging and monitoring. When the conditions for irrigation are met as shown in table 1, the microcontroller
puts a signal to the valve in the farm and it opens, then the pump starts to pump water thus irrigating the farm.
As irrigation is on-going, the information is being displayed on the LCD screen as well as on the app in the host
computer.

Table 1: Irrigation condition

S/No Irrigation status Sunlight/insolation Moisture level Temperature
1 Yes, irrigation Low Low Low

2 Yes, irrigation Low Low High

3 No irrigation Low High Low

4 No irrigation Low High High

5 No irrigation High Low Low

6 No irrigation High Low High

7 No irrigation High High Low

8 No irrigation High High High

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 Design and Implementation of a Smart Irrigation System..

4.1 Discussion
The system will not work until the irrigation requirements are met and these requirements include that
the soil moisture level must be below the required threshold and that the amount of insolation and temperature is
within the acceptable range. So, if the parameters being measured by the soil moisture, light and temperature
sensors meet this criteria, then the PIC micro-controllers will send a command to the relay of that specific valve
linked to a farm to open the valve and a command is also sent to the relay of the pump to irrigate the farm that
needs to be irrigated. Also, for the purpose of demonstration the system assigns an irrigation time of thirty
second to irrigates each farm (farm1, farm2 and farm3).

V. CONCLUSION
The need for efficient irrigation system in agriculture cannot be over emphasized. To solve some of the
irrigation problems faced by farmers, an advanced system such as this prototype smart Irrigation system is
needed. The field application of this technology will leads to better growth of plants as irrigation is applied as at
when needed without over or under irrigation of plants. This would not only increase yield but would also
conserve water which is a scarce product and most importantly to reduce labourers stress of going to monitor
their plant all the time and perhaps wrong application of water to their plant. The smart Irrigation System have
being successfully implemented at the laboratory scale. The next step is to implement the project in real life
scenario for first hand results, before implementing it on the commercial scale.
The following recommendations were made for further studies: Zig Bee module can be used to offer
wireless connection between the components interfaced with the microcontroller instead of wire connection. A
Wi-Fi module could also be used in place of the Bluetooth module to increase receptive range. Creating user
friendly mobile application in place of the desktop app will also help in making the system easier to which have
more controlled data. Also, we can develop this system by using renewable energy which is solar power instead
of batteries using solar energy will help to reduce future cost and study could be extended to monitor a larger
portion of land with two or more crops

REFERENCES
[1] Pavithra D.S, Srinah M.S (2014) “ GSM based irrigation system for efficient use of resources and crop planning by using an
Android mobile” , ISOR Journal of Mechanical and Civil Engineering, Volume II, Issue Ver.1 , pp.49-55.
[2] I.A Ahmed, M.A Mutaz, O.O Omar, I.M Ahmed (2016) “ Design and Development of GSM Based Automated Spray Irrigation
System Prototype” ,A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of B.Sc. in Agricultural and
Biological Engineering
[3] S. Odara, Z. Khan, and T. S. Ustun (2015) “ Integration of Precision Agriculture and Development,” IEEE Int. Conf. Technol.
Innov. ICT Agric. Rural Dev. (TIAR ),Chennai,India, 2015 pp. 1– 28,.
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[5] Anon, (2017). International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR). [online] Available at:
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[6] Arduino Based Automatic Plant Irrigation System with Message AlertSource: http://www.electronicshub.org/automatic-plant-
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