A Wireless Sensor Network using XBee for precision agriculture of sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas)

The crop used for this research is sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas). There are two identical set-ups containing sweet potatoes being planted and monitored. One of the set-up is in a controlled environment and the other one is exposed to the natural environment. The controlled environment is enclosed in a miniature greenhouse in which its temperature, relative humidity and soil moisture is being controlled using Arduino Uno microcontroller according to the profile of the sweet potato in normal conditions. Each set-up uses sensors for measuring the aforementioned parameters. With the use of a Wireless Sensor Network, the data from each sensors are collected wirelessly utilizing the Zigbee protocol using XBee as its hardware platform. The XBee´s are connected to a personal computer and the data gathered is generated and interpreted using MATLAB. A graphical user interface is created in MATLAB to display the temperature and humidity of the environment and the soil moisture of the crop. From the two set-ups being compared and analyzed, the set-up in a controlled environment defines precision agriculture.