Wireless Sensor Network Applied to Precision Agriculture: A Technical Case Study at the Technical University of Manabí

Today, the use of technologies in agriculture, which is called precision agriculture, is increasingly necessary to improve crop yields. One of the most widely used technologies is wireless sensor networks (WSN). This article deals with the development, implementation, and evaluation of a network of wireless sensors applied to precision agriculture at the Faculty of Agriculture of the Technical University of Manabí to study environmental phenomena in crops. The sensor network collects data on environmental variables such as soil moisture, temperature, and ambient humidity. This data is sent wirelessly to a head node responsible for uploading the information to an Internet of Things (IoT) platform. The tools used were Arduino Mega Rev3 as main coordination node board, Arduino Pro mini, XBee S2c devices for wireless communication, DHT-22 and YL-69 sensors to obtain environmental information and rechargeable batteries with solar panels. Custom Arduino libraries were used to enable Arduino sleep mode and achieve power savings.