Automatic Monitoring of Soil Moisture and Controlling of Irrigation System

Int. J. Advanced Networking and Applications
Volume: 09 Issue: 06 Pages: 3658-3662 (2018) ISSN: 0975-0290
3658
Automatic Monitoring of Soil Moisture and
Controlling of Irrigation System
Kandasamy V
Associate Professor, Department of EEE, Kumaraguru College of Technology, Coimbatore.
Email: kandasamy.v.eee@kct.ac.in
Divya R
PG Scholar, Department of EEE, Kumaraguru College of Technology, Coimbatore.
Email: divyadivi28995@gmail.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------ABSTRACT-----------------------------------------------------------
In past couple of decades, there is immediate growth in field of agricultural technology. Utilization of proper method of
irrigation by drip is very reasonable and proficient. A various drip irrigation methods have been proposed, but they
have been found to be very luxurious and dense to use. The farmer has to maintain watch on irrigation schedule in the
conventional drip irrigation system, which is different for different types of crops. In remotely monitored embedded
system for irrigation purposes have become a new essential for farmer to accumulate his energy, time and money and
will take place only when there will be requirement of water. In this approach, the soil test for chemical constituents,
water content, and salinity and fertilizer requirement data collected by wireless and processed for better drip irrigation
plan. This paper reviews different monitoring systems and proposes an automatic monitoring system model using
Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) which helps the farmer to improve the yield.
Keywords - Drip irrigation, Data logger, Fertilizer, Hotspot, Multiplexer, Remote monitoring, Soil, sensors, ZigBee.
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Date of Submission: March 07, 2018 Date of Acceptance: April 09, 2018
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I. INTRODUCTION
The Irrigation is the artificial application of water to the
soil for assisting in growing crops. Drip irrigation also
known as micro irrigation & is an irrigation method which
minimizes the use of water & fertilizer by allowing water
to drip slowly to the roots of plants, either onto the soil
surface or directly onto the root zone due to which a large
quantity of water is saved & also the fertilizer which
comes to the plant with the water. Indian agriculture is
dependent on the monsoons, which is dependent on the
nature and not a reliable source of water, so there is a need
for an automatic irrigation system in the country which
can provide water to the farms according to their moisture,
temperature and soil types & fertilizers. For a big farm
land with horticulture activity the solution will be an
automated system. Water contained in the soil is called
soil moisture. And it is very important for plant growth.
Water soluble fertilizer can be also applied without any
wastage by this drip irrigation system. The advantage of
using wireless sensors is to control all related parameters
for better irrigation management.
This paper gives a review of remote monitoring and
control system based on existing technologies. ZigBee or
Hotspot based remote control and monitoring system with
automatic irrigation management is proposed in this
project. The rest of the paper is organized as follows.
Section II summarizes the literature review on the existing
systems. Section III analyzes the main aim and prime
objective of the automatic irrigation system. Section IV
describes the basic need of the project. Section V
describes the proposed system. Finally, Section V deals
with conclusion and future scope. And the last is the
reference papers and publications.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
After the research in the agricultural field, researchers
found that the yield of agriculture goes on decreasing day
by day. Use of technology in the field of agriculture plays
important role in increasing the production as well as in
reducing the extra man power efforts, water requirement
and fertilizer requirement. Some of the researchers tried
for betterment of farmers and provides the systems that
use technologies which are helpful for increasing the
agricultural yield. Some of such researches carried out in
the field of agriculture are summarized below.
In Turkey, 75% of the current fresh water is consumed in
the agricultural irrigation [11]. Therefore, efficient water
management plays an important role in the irrigated
agricultural cropping systems [16],[28]. In order to
produce more crop per drop, growers in (semi) arid
regions are currently exploring irrigation techniques in the
range from using less fresh water [3],[24]. One of them is
making agriculture in a manner of sense, which uses a
different type of sensors [19]. A site-specific wireless
sensor-based irrigation control system is a potential
solution to optimize yields and maximize water use
efficiency for fields with variation in water availability
due to different soil characteristics or crop water needs and
site-specific controlling irrigation valves [17],[3],[7].
Decision making process with the controls is a viable
option for determining when and where to irrigate, and
how much water to use. Temporal monitoring of soil
moisture at different growth stages of the crop could
prevent water stress and improve the crop yield [10],[5].
Sensor–based irrigation systems have been studied in
many applications [15], [21], [30], [31], [38], [1], [17],
[18].

3659
In the last two decades, with the development of wireless
technologies, several researches focused on autonomous
irrigation with sensors in agricultural systems [25], [39].
Amongst these works, a micro sprinkler system has a
different place, and it was designed for latching the
controlled solenoid valves in a citrus orchard with wireless
sensors [33]. Afterwards, soil moisture sensors and
sprinkler valve controllers are being used for site-specific
irrigation automation [16],[22],[36],[27],[9]. The
advantages of using wireless sensors are having the
reduced wiring and piping costs, and easier installation
and maintenance in large areas [26],[37],[2]. After the
usage of wireless technology began in agricultural
irrigation, a trial was made to involve different types of
equipments in such instrumentations. In terms of
controllers,[22],[7],[8] were designed microcontroller site-
specific irrigation, wireless monitoring system was
implemented with a field programmable gate array
(FPGA) by [20].
In terms of protocols, infra-red, GSM/GPRS WPANs
(Wireless Personal Area Networks), Bluetooth, WLANs
(Wireless Local Area Networks) have been put to different
utilities to implement wireless sensors in precision
agriculture [37],[4],[35],[29]. Many studies have
successfully demonstrated the use of active and passive
microwave remote sensing too [13],[34],[14]. It has been
seen that many irrigation scheduling methods by wireless
sensors have been developed for the last several decades.
Many of the commercially available sensors, valves and
modules assembled for irrigation system networks are too
complex and/or costly to be feasible for site-specific
management of fixed irrigation systems. The adoption of
them by producers has been limited due to cost,
installation time, maintenance, and complexity of systems
[32], [23].
III. AIM & OBJECTIVE
Aim
The main aim of the research is to develop and to test an
automation system having a low cost equipment and
feedback type controller for site-specific management of
irrigation systems and also to have a alternative power
source like solar power or wind power. The data available
from the various sensors will be received at the wireless
base station for proper control, based on data.
Objective
The prime objective is to select the appropriate wireless
network to collect the data from moisture sensors, water
soluble fertilizer sensor placed in the field, temperature
sensors of various areas of the field, pressure sensors in
the irrigation system to monitor the proper drip of water
along with the fertilizer which are kept in a separate tank.
Another addition of the proposed automation system is to
install the digital cameras to monitor the plant growth and
overall condition of the field. In addition, the developed
irrigation method partly removes the excess workload of
the farmers.
To identify the suitable pump with facility for maintaining
certain recommended pressure in the water pipe. To
indentify proper sensors and monitoring device required
for the farming data like soil moisture, soil temperature,
soil fertilizer & chemical constituents.
Search of appropriate sensors with specifications and
coordinating wireless system for acquisition of various
data. To process the data based on the limits set and there
by controlling the whole irrigation management. To find
the economic method of drip irrigation and its technique
for automation regarding short term and long term crop.
IV. NEED OF THE PROJECT
In India, the market is mainly based on agriculture and the
climatic environment is isotropic and is not able to make
full use of agricultural assets. The main cause is the lack
of rains in many part of India and scarify of land water.
The demand for new water saving techniques in irrigation
is growing immediately right now. At the present period,
the farmers have been using irrigation technique in India
through the manual control in which the farmers irrigate
the land at the normal interval. This process sometimes
consumes additional water or sometimes the water reaches
delayed due to which the crops get dehydrated. The
effectiveness of the irrigation is determined by a number
of different factors, including the type of irrigation system
and the conditions at its instance of application.
Irrigation is the artificial application of water to the soil
usually for supporting in harvesting the crops. In crop
production, it is mainly used in desiccated area and in
periods of rain water shortfalls.
Surface Irrigation
Surface irrigation is defined as the group of application
techniques where water is applied and distributed over the
soil surface by gravity. It is by far the most common form
of irrigation throughout the world. Surface irrigation is
often referred to as flood irrigation, use of canals, rivers,
ponds, deep tube well are seen in surface irrigation.
Drip Irrigation
Drip irrigation, also known as trickle irrigation or micro
irrigation or localized irrigation, is an irrigation method
which saves water and fertilizer by allowing water to drip
slowly to the roots of plants, either onto the soil surface or
directly onto the root zone, through a network of valves,
pipes, tubing, and emitter[40].
V. PROPOSED SOLUTION
The betterment of agriculture depends on various
environmental parameters such as soil temperature, soil
moisture, relative humidity, pH of soil, light intensity,
fertilizing property of the soil, etc. Any small changes in
any of these parameters can cause problems like diseases,
improper growth of plant, etc. mainly resulting in lesser
yield.

3660
The block diagram of the proposed system of input unit is
shown in Fig. 1 consists of different types of sensing unit
such as Soil Moisture Sensor to measure water content of
soil, Temperature Sensor detects the temperature,
Humidity Sensor to measure the presence of water in air,
Pressure Regulator Sensor to be selected for maintaining
the recommended pressure, Molecular Sensor selected for
better crop growth, Digital Camera with capability of
tracking and taking photographs of the crop field to find
the crop growth for measurement. The output of sensors
are converted to analog using D/A converter at the
transmitter input side and converted back to digital using
A/D converter at the receiver output side. Multiplexer
sometimes called Data selector is a combinational logic
circuit that selects one of 2n inputs and route it to the
output. The data obtained from different types of sensors
are transmitted to the Multiplexer using Wireless Sensor
Network. ZigBee or Hotspot modules for wireless data
transfer and receiving for control unit.
Fig. 1 Basic block diagram of proposed system (input
part)
The block diagram of the proposed system of control unit
is shown in Fig. 2 consists of data logger which allows
count information to be associated with the date and time,
and for the data to be downloaded onto a PC for flexible
and detailed data analysis, Demultiplexer split a combined
stream arriving from a shared medium into the original
information streams and fed to different types of actuators
such as drip irrigation pump, boring pump, fertilizer pump,
controlling of pump speed, controlling of fertilizer input
from the tank and display the field etc.
Fig. 2 Basic block diagram of proposed system (control
unit)
VI. CONCLUSIONS & FUTURE SCOPE
It can be concluded that the modern use of electronic,
electrical, chemical and mechanical systems will be very
advantages for better agricultural output. Preservation of
water sources and minimizing the use of inorganic
fertilizer are possible with these methods. Use of bio-
fertilizer in appropriate manner will find better guiding
parameters through the various sensing methods. In this
age of population explosion the huge demand of food can
be met with this state of the art process.
To keep the environmental balance of various sources of
this planet and maintaining the methane generation during
harvesting under control, this modern approach will help
to reach a target with more modern gadgets. In future days
to come, we can even apply food nutrients to the plant and
crop by air mixed with very less water, with better
monitoring.
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BIOGRAPHIES AND PHOTOGRAPHS
Kandasamy Varatharaju, is an
Associate Professor of Department of
Electrical and Electronics Engineering
in Kumaraguru College of Technology,
Coimbatore.
Divya Ragu, is a PG Scholar pursuing
Embedded System Technologies in the
Department of Electrical and
Electronics Engineering in
Kumaraguru College of Technology, Coimbatore.

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