A wireless sensor platform for advanced monitoring of crops in sustainable agriculture (DIT.AD014.057)

Thematic area

Engineering, ICT and technologies for energy and transportation

Project area

Structure responsible for the research project

Institute for microelectronics and microsystems (IMM)

Project manager

DAVIDE POLESE
Phone number: 0649934062
Email: davide.polese@cnr.it

Abstract

Ecosystem preservation and production maximisation are competing objectives in agriculture. Reducing the need of undifferentiated or late interventions would reduce the number of disease treatments needed, as well as the consumption of water and fertiliser. These objectives, part of the FAO principles on Sustainable Food and Agriculture, are only attainable through monitoring systems able to reach a single plant. Precision agriculture employ continuous and pervasive monitoring of crops, that in turn allows fast and targeted interventions.
This project aims to designing a wireless sensor network (WSN) able to measure environmental parameters such as relative humidity, irradiance and volatile pollutant concentration. The parameters measured by each node provide information on the status of the crop with a detail that depends only on the number of nodes composing the network and that can reach even a single plant. In addition to local information, trends and dynamics across fields can be obtained in post-processing and this derived information can be useful to organise farming interventions.

Goals

Reducing the need for undifferentiated or late interventions on crops has the potential to reduce the number of disease treatments needed, as well as the consumption of water and fertiliser. These objectives are only obtainable through a detailed knowledge of the health state of a crop.
We want to investigate and demonstrate the potential of modern sensor networks and data analytics systems for moving towards a sustainable agriculture.
A wireless sensor network will be developed to monitor important crop attributes such as relative humidity, visible and infrared radiance and volatile compounds.
A web based platform will be implemented to collect, visualise and extrapolate information about crop health, pointing out trends and dynamics across the field. All these information will help to optimise agricultural procedures, so reducing water waste, fertiliser use and phytosanitary interventions. Our objectives are:
1. Design and develop wireless sensor network equipped with physical (irradiance and temperature) sensors and Chemical (volatile compounds and humidity) sensors.
2. Develop a cloud environment for the visualisation of the data.
3. Perform in-field tests

Start date of activity

11/01/2021

Keywords

Wireless sensor networks, Sensors, Gas sensors

Last update: 09/12/2024