Adaptive wireless sensor networks powered by hybrid energy harvesting for environmental monitoring

Due to the cost-effective nature and deployment flexibility of wireless sensor network (WSN), it has been extensively used in many real world applications. Sensor nodes are relatively inexpensive and capable of data processing and wireless communication with some level of intelligence, they play a key role in real world applications. Precision irrigation in agriculture is a key application of wireless sensor network. Typically, a sensor node is powered by its on-board battery source. This limitation fully or partially contributes to causing many problems in the network such as the loss of connectivity of a sensor node known as orphaned-node. Moreover, available number of sensor types in a sensor node is typically limited and it requires a significant modification in hardware and software interfaces to extend the number of sensor types. In this paper, we propose an adaptive sensor node system combining a flexible hardware prototype and innovative energy harvesting techniques to optimise the performance of the network operating in a large farming environment.