In-Field Soil Property Monitoring using Hybrid Sensor Network
Zhen Li, Ning Wang, Aaron J. Franzen, Peyman Taher · 2009 Reno, Nevada, June 21 - June 24, 2009 · 2009
A hybrid soil sensor network (HSSN) for in-situ, real-time soil property monitoring was developed and deployed to an experimental field. The HSSN included a local wireless sensor network (LWSN), which formed by multiple sensor nodes installed at selected locations in the field to acquire readings from soil property sensors and transmit the data wirelessly to a data sink installed on the edge of the field; and a long-distance cellular communication network (LCCN). The field data were transmitted to a remote web server through General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) data transfer service provided by a commercial cellular provider. The data sink functioned as a gateway which received data from all sensor nodes; repacked the data, buffered the data according to cellular communication schedule, and transmitted the data packets to LCCN. A web server was implemented on a PC to receive, store, process and display the real time field data. Data packets were transmitted based on an energy-aware self-organized routing algorithm. The completed HSSN has been in operation since it was deployed to the field in May 4th, 2009 and performed satisfactorily.