Smart Irrigation Systems: Business Application

and Challenges
Business Application: Fuzzy logic-based irrigation control system using wireless
sensor network for precision agriculture

Precision agriculture is integrated information and production-based farming system that is

designed to increase long-term, site-specific, and whole farm production efficiencies, productivity,
and profitability, while minimizing unintended impacts. There is a need for sensing technologies
and precision techniques, which will allow automated collection, communication and presentation
of soil, crop, climatic, pest and bio-safety data towards full societal benefits. In the field of
agriculture, use of proper method of irrigation and its control is important.
Automation of irrigation system has the potential to provide maximum water use efficiency by
monitoring soil moistures and other crop parameters at optimum level. In conventional irrigation
system, the farmer has to keep watch on irrigation timetable, which is different for different crops
and dependent on type of soil and other parameters. At the present era, the farmers have been
using irrigation techniques in India through the manual control in which farmers irrigate the land
at regular intervals. This process sometimes consumes more water or sometimes water reaches
late due to which crop gets dried. Water and electricity should be optimally utilized in an
agriculture like India. Irrigation has traditionally resulted in excessive labor and non-uniformity in
water application across the field. Hence an automatic irrigation system based on sensing
technology is required to reduce the labor cost and to give uniformity in water application across
the field. There are different types of irrigation such as Surface irrigation, Localized irrigation, Drip
irrigation and Sprinkler irrigation. In the field of agriculture, use of proper method of irrigation and
its control is important. In conventional irrigation system, the farmer has to keep watch on
irrigation timetable, which is different for different crops and dependent on type of soil and other
parameters. Irrigation has traditionally resulted in excessive labor and non-uniformity in water
application across the field. Hence an automatic irrigation system based on sensing technology is
required to reduce the labor cost and to give uniformity in water application across the field.
Wireless sensor network technology has a broad application in many areas because of its
advantages such as safe and reliable data transfer, simple and flexible network, low-cost
equipment, long battery life, etc.
The implementation of precise control irrigation for crop water demand information is one of the
important ways to improve the utilization of water. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) has proved
to be useful in applications that involve monitoring of real-time data. In order to optimize the yield
and the use of the available resources, wireless sensor networks can play a relevant role because
of their ability of providing real-time data collected by spatially distributed sensors.
Implementation of System Hardware
The Fuzzy based Irrigation Control System architecture using Wireless Sensor network for
monitoring and controlling the irrigation in an agriculture which is as shown in Figure 1. It consists
of four basic components namely [A] Wireless Sensor Network [B] Gateway Node/Sink Node [C]
Fuzzy based Irrigation Controller [D] Irrigation Pipe Network. The first component consists of
Wireless Sensor Network which sense physical and environmental parameters and send data to
the gateway node. Second component is application server which receives data from gateway and
processes it. The last component is irrigation pipe network laid over the irrigated areas and electric
control valves are installed on pipelines.
Wireless sensor network: The MEMSIC eKo Pro Series is a wireless agricultural and environmental
sensing system for crop monitoring has been utilized in implementing the proposed system. This
solution provides users with an easy to deploy wireless monitoring system to efficiently gather
data about the needs of their environment from multiple locations.

Sensors for Environment and Crop Parameter Measurements

Soil Moisture and Temperature: The ES1100 Watermark Sensor (granular matrix sensor) is a soil
moisture and soil temperature sensor. Up to four ES1100 sensors can be connected to one eKo
Node to measure soil moisture at different soil depths. By monitoring the sensor measurements
between irrigations, it is possible to measure the rate at which the soil is drying out.
Ambient Temperature and Humidity: The ES1201 is a temperature/humidity sensor that measures
the ambient relative humidity and air temperature. These readings are also used to calculate dew
point. The sensor enclosure protects the sensor from mechanical damage, and a membrane filter
protects the sensor elements from dust, dirt and water spray
Leaf Wetness: Leaf wetness sensor from Decagon. Many fungal and bacterial diseases affect plants
only when moisture is present on a leaf surface. The leaf wetness determines the presence and
duration of canopy wetness allowing users to forecast disease and protect the plant canopy. The
LWS outputs 445 raw counts when dry. When the sensor is totally wet, as in a heavy rain, the signal
can range up to around 1400 counts. Varying amounts of water on the surface of the sensor cause
a sensor output proportional to the amount of water on the sensor’s surface.

Fuzzy Logic
Fuzzy Logic Control (FLC) system is based on fuzzy set theory. This set theory is advanced version
of classical set theory called crisp theory. In crisp set theory, an element either belongs to or does
not belong to a set. But fuzzy set supports a flexible sense of membership of elements to a set.
Many degrees of membership, between 0 and 1, are allowed. The membership function is
associated with a fuzzy set in such a way that the function maps every element of the universe of
discourse or the reference set to the interval [0, 1]. In crisp logic, the truth values acquired by
propositions or predicates are two-valued, namely TRUE or FALSE which may be treated
numerically equivalent to (0, 1). However, in fuzzy logic, truth values are multi valued such as
absolutely true, partly true, absolutely false very true, and so on and are numerically equivalent to
any value in the range 0 to 1. Fuzzy logic allows inclusion of expert knowledge in control system.
A fuzzy logic system contains sets used to categories input data (fuzzification), decision rules that
are applied to each set, and a way of generating an output from the rule results (defuzzification).
Inference unit is the core of the fuzzy controller. It generates fuzzy control actions applying the
rules in the knowledge base to the current process state. It determines the degree to which each
measured valued is a member of a given labeled group.
In arid regions, developing environment and crop-specific irrigation scheduling that reduces water
lost via evapotranspiration is a key to a sustainable and better managed irrigation. This paper
presents a practical solution based on intelligent and effective system for a field of hyper aridity
like in Doha–Qatar. The system consists of a feedback fuzzy logic controller that logs key field
parameters through specific sensors and a Zigbee–GPRS remote monitoring and database
platform. The system is easy to deploy in existing drip irrigation systems without any physical
modification. For a given crop, the fuzzy logic controller acquires data from these sensors and then
applies well-devised fuzzy rules to produce appropriate time and duration for irrigation. All
variables are fuzzified using trapezoidal and triangular membership functions. In this fuzzification,
Max–Min inference engine and Mamdani-type rule base is adopted in order to make the best
decision for each situation. Typical data in summer and winter showed that the controller ensures
maintaining the soil moisture above a pre-defined value with non-abrupt oscillations. The system
compensates the amount of water that is lost through evapotranspiration as predicted by
Penman–Monteith model and hence allows predicting future water consumption. A local station
first processes and saves real-time data received from the field controller via wireless Zigbee
protocol to finally transmit these data to a remote station via a GPRS link. This enhancement
enables tracking system performance in real time and creating a database for analysis and
improvement. It follows that the deployment of fuzzy control combined with remote data logging
would foster better management of irrigation and water resources in hyper-arid lands such as
Qatar.

The Challenges: Adoption and Cost Factor

The adoption of IoT in agriculture has gone up immensely in recent years. Even so, the concept of
smart irrigation remains a relatively new one. Most of the existing smart irrigation controllers have
many complex features and capabilities. While these are perfectly suited for large-scale
commercial usage, e.g. on a golf course, they are way too elaborate for small farm owners and
independent gardeners. The need of the hour is to raise awareness about and familiarity with
these smart irrigation systems among individuals, particularly since user-inputs (for example, the
type of crops, soil, surface slope, etc.) are critical for the performance of these systems. Also, it
must be kept in mind that the room for error in a ‘smart system’ is much lower than in a traditional
set-up. A mechanical failure or a network snag can have serious consequences.
There are plenty of things to be said in favor of smart irrigation systems. For starters, they help
with the optimal utilization of water, ensuring the uniform watering of plants. With the help of
high-end sensors, they can also factor in climatic parameters to make the irrigation routine more
efficient. Significant savings are to be had, both in terms of much lower water wastages, as well as
the diminished need for manual labor. With intelligent ‘irrigation decision-making’ capacities,
advanced IoT-supported smart irrigation controllers are changing the face of agriculture. The field
is evolving rapidly, and it will be interesting to track further developments in this domain over the
foreseeable future.
The Cost Factor: While some investment is required to implement smart irrigation solutions on a
field, the sensor costs are far from being exorbitant. On average, the price of a soil moisture sensor
lies in the $150-$160 range, while that of the more advanced WBICs is around $300. The rotating
sprinklers, which, incidentally, are ideal for irrigating slopes, are priced on a per-unit basis of
around $6 or $7. Large manufacturers also offer special rebates on the sensors and sprinkler units.
Given the potential benefits of upgrading to a smart plant watering system, the costs are relatively
reasonable.