Greenhouse Environmental Monitoring and Control
Greenhouse Wireless Sensor Network
Greenhouse facilities are being rapidly developed and expanded. The environmental conditions of a greenhouse directly affect the growth of crops. Therefore, the real-time monitoring and control of such type of indoor environment is important. Environmental automatic control technology is an effective means to improve the control technology of a greenhouse environment. Wireless sensor networks (WSN) can form a useful part of the automation system architecture in modern greenhouses. A WSN is a system of interconnected wireless sensors that monitor environmental conditions in real-time, In smart agriculture, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) collect real-time data on environmental conditions, while artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms analyze this data to optimize resource use and enhance greenhouse efficiency.
Greenhouse Applications with WSNs
Integrating applications with WSNs in greenhouse operations offers significant advantages, covering various aspects such as irrigation control, plant disease and pest monitoring, fertilizer optimization, autonomous agricultural machinery, and crop monitoring. A condensed overview of the main aspects includes:
Wireless Communication Protocols
In the agricultural domain, IoT-WSNs collect precise and extensive real-time field data. Various communication protocols, including ZigBee, WiFi, SigFox, and LoRaWAN, find typical applications in SA. These technologies significantly contribute to sustainable and precision agricultural production by ensuring long-distance coverage, low data packet loss, low power consumption, and effective connectivity. In smart agriculture, leveraging IoT-WSNs and wireless communication protocols is essential.
Base Station
The base station, which is the network coordinator, manages the activities of individual nodes by periodically requesting data. In addition to data aggregation and analysis, the base station acts as a door to the Internet (typically a local area network), providing operators with remote access to the WSN’s data.
Sensor Nodes
A WSN generally consists of many low-cost and low-power multifunctional sensor nodes that are deployed throughout the greenhouse. A typical sensor node in a WSN consists of a wireless communication unit, a microprocessor, a data acquisition unit, a memory unit, and sensors.
Sensors
A sensor can be defined as any instrument that measures some type of physical or chemical characteristic and converts that measurement into a signal that can be read by an observer or automated data collection system. As stated in the sections above, all greenhouse control systems require information on the variables that define the greenhouse environment. Sensors provide the information. Traditionally, the growers have acted as the system’s integrated sensor, directly feeling greenhouse conditions, which they tried to relate to their crop’s growth and development. Today, there are many sophisticated electronic sensors available to the grower for monitoring greenhouse conditions and providing input data for automatically making increasingly subtle and efficient control decisions.
User Interface
The user interface is arguably the most important part of this system as it allows the growers to use the data and derive maximum benefit from this system. The user interface mainly includes real-time data display, statistical data analysis, real-time warning system, historical data query, and other functions.
Data Logging
Data history is valuable in identifying patterns and trends in environmental conditions. However, manually monitoring and recording environmental parameters takes a significant amount of personnel time and detracts from other important workplace demands. Many monitoring systems automatically save information, recording tens of thousands of data points, dates, and times.
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