Wireless sensor networks in precision agriculture

We present the initial setup of the Lofar Agro project that concentrates on monitoring micro-climates in a crop field. In addition to the agronomic experiment, Lofar Agro aims at gathering statistics on the wireless sensor network itself. These statistics will form the basis for simulations of algorithms in wireless sensor networks and will be distributed. 1. PRECISION AGRICULTURE In the past few years, new trends have emerged in the agricultural sector. Thanks to developments in the field of wireless sensor networks as well as miniaturization of the sensor boards, precision agriculture started emerging. Precision agriculture concentrates on providing the means for observing, assessing and controlling agricultural practices. It covers a wide range of agricultural concerns from daily herd management through horticulture to field crop production [1, 2, 7]. It concerns as well preand post-production aspects of agricultural enterprises. A facet of precision agriculture concentrates on site-specific crop management. This encompasses different aspects, such as monitoring soil, crop and climate in a field; generalizing the results to a complete parcel; providing a decisionsupport system (DSS) for delivering insight into possible treatments, field-wide or for specific parts of a field; and the means for taking differential action, for example, varying in real-time an operation such as fertilizer, lime and pesticide application, tillage, or sowing rate. This article describes an experiment in field crop production, referred to as Lofar Agro. The example application being deployed deals with fighting phytophtora in a potato field. Phytophtora is a fungal disease which can enter a field through a variety of sources. The development and associated attack of the crop depends strongly on the climatological conditions within the field. Humidity is an important factor in the development of the disease. Both temperature and whether or not the leaves are wet are also important indicators. To monitor these three critical factors, we instrumented a potato field with wireless sensors. The main goal of monitoring is to reveal when the crop is at risk of developing the disease and let the farmer treat the field or parts of it with fungicide only when absolutely needed. In addition to the agronomic experiment, we wish to gather data and statistics on the behavior of a wireless sensor nethttp://www.lofar.org/p/Agriculture.htm Lofar gateway Switch Lofar server/router Lofar gateway Phytophtora DSS & server Agro server Diagnoses Observers Internet Lofar Field wired network Field gateway Lofar station Field