Instituto de Investigación para la Gestión Integrada de Zonas Costeras, Universitat Politècnica de València, 46730 Grau de Gandia, Spain.
Network and Telecommunication Research Group, University of Haute Alsace, 34 rue du Grillenbreit, 68008 Colmar, France.
Sensors (Basel). 2021 Mar 1;21(5):1693. doi: 10.3390/s21051693.
Deploying wireless sensor networks (WSN) in rural environments such as agricultural fields may present some challenges that affect the communication between the nodes due to the vegetation. These challenges must be addressed when implementing precision agriculture (PA) systems that monitor the fields and estimate irrigation requirements with the gathered data. In this paper, different WSN deployment configurations for a soil monitoring PA system are studied to identify the effects of the rural environment on the signal and to identify the key aspects to consider when designing a PA wireless network. The PA system is described, providing the architecture, the node design, and the algorithm that determines the irrigation requirements. The testbed includes different types of vegetation and on-ground, near-ground, and above-ground ESP32 Wi-Fi node placements. The results of the testbed show high variability in densely vegetated areas. These results are analyzed to determine the theoretical maximum coverage for acceptable signal quality for each of the studied configurations. The best coverage was obtained for the near-ground deployment. Lastly, the aspects of the rural environment and the deployment that affect the signal such as node height, crop type, foliage density, or the form of irrigation are discussed.
在农业领域等农村环境中部署无线传感器网络（WSN）可能会带来一些挑战，由于植被的存在，这些挑战会影响节点之间的通信。在实施监测农田并利用收集的数据估算灌溉需求的精准农业（PA）系统时，必须解决这些挑战。在本文中，研究了用于土壤监测 PA 系统的不同 WSN 部署配置，以确定农村环境对信号的影响，并确定设计 PA 无线网络时需要考虑的关键方面。描述了 PA 系统，提供了架构、节点设计以及确定灌溉需求的算法。测试台包括不同类型的植被以及地面、近地面和地面以上的 ESP32 Wi-Fi 节点放置。测试台的结果显示在植被茂密的区域存在高度变化。分析这些结果以确定针对每个研究配置可接受信号质量的理论最大覆盖范围。近地面部署的覆盖范围最好。最后，讨论了影响信号的农村环境和部署方面，例如节点高度、作物类型、叶密度或灌溉形式。
