Soil Fertility Mapping Utilizing Wireless Sensor Network Applying Tree-Based Topology
Sheena Raphaella N. Gregorio, Florence Maye F. Ico, Glenn V. Magwili · 2024
The Philippines’ backbone in the economy is the agriculture sector, where farming has been the biggest source of food production for decades already. Various crops, such as sweet potato, cassava, and groundnut, are some of the in-demand crops planted by farmers, especially in tropical countries where the dry season is experienced almost all year round, as these crops can withstand less moisture. At the same time, the country also experiences overpopulation where food supplies are lacking at times, and farmers lack knowledge of their soil’s quality, causing them to overuse synthetic fertilizers to boost their yields, not only affecting the soil to deteriorate but also degrading the health of the crops. The solution was to create a portable device to measure nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, the primary nutrients for plant growth. This study addresses the urgent need for precision farming methods in the face of problems such as soil deterioration and population increase by designing and implementing a wireless sensor network system combining the Internet of Things with sensor nodes set up in a tree topology network for mapping soil nutrients, focusing on assessing the efficacy of the proposed network system. The results show a 100% success rate of data transmission for all the sensor nodes in a tree topology configuration up to 5 meters distance apart and started to have minimal errors in transmitting at $\mathbf{6}$ meters up to 10 meters and have an average time of 3 to 4 seconds data transfer regardless of the number of nodes and distance. Three conditions were also assessed to observe the factors affecting the NPK soil nutrients.