Abstract

FLORES-MEDINA, María et al. Monitoring Soil Moisture using a Wireless Sensor Network. Tecnol. cienc. agua [online]. 2015, vol.6, n.5, pp.75-88. ISSN 2007-2422.

Water has become a scarce resource and is crucial to the production of food. Therefore, it is increasingly necessary to generate new methods to manage and conserve this vital resource. This article presents a system that helps to continuously monitor soil moisture using a new communications technology- Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). This is an emerging technology that has been used in agriculture over recent years. Part of the system includes the design and development of three sensor nodes to monitor soil moisture. Sensors were selected and coupled to measure soil moisture using the principle of Frequency Domain Reflectometry. The calibration method is described, which is based on the volumetric method as a reference to obtain fit parameters for the WSN nodes. An interface was designed to display and store the WSN information and the information was linked to a Dropbox account for remote access. The study presents the installation of the WSN system under controlled test conditions as well as the validation of the stability and functioning of the system for monitoring soil moisture. Lastly, the importance of this new technology to aid the monitoring of soil moisture and other variables in the crop cycles is analyzed.

Keywords : Soil moisture; wireless sensor network; automated monitoring system.

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