Estimating Vegetation Water Content with Wireless Sensor Network Communication Signals

Author

Giacomin, João Carlos ; Vasconcelos, Flávio Henrique ; Silva, Elson José da

Author_Institution

Univ. Federal de Lavras, Lavras

fYear

2007

fDate

1-3 May 2007

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

5

Abstract

This paper proposes a distributed measuring system based on wireless sensor networks (WSN) employed to estimate plant water-content in agricultural fields. The WSN is present in a crop field in order to measure environmental variables, like soil moisture. Water-content is obtained by measuring the attenuation of the network communication signal. The need for distributed measurements to estimate agricultural crop parameters is pointed-out and a mathematical model of the radio-wave propagation through the vegetation is developed. This model is used to estimate plant water-content. Experimental results are also presented.

Keywords

agriculture; crops; moisture measurement; wireless sensor networks; agricultural crop; agricultural fields; crop field; distributed measuring system; network communication signal; radio-wave propagation; soil moisture; vegetation water content estimation; wireless sensor network communication signals; Attenuation measurement; Crops; Mathematical model; Moisture measurement; Parameter estimation; Plants (biology); Soil measurements; Soil moisture; Vegetation; Wireless sensor networks; distributed measurement; precision agriculture; radio wave attenuation; wireless sensor network;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference Proceedings, 2007. IMTC 2007. IEEE

Conference_Location

Warsaw

ISSN

1091-5281

Print_ISBN

1-4244-0588-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IMTC.2007.379418

Filename

4258297