Wireless Sensors Network in the Efficient Management of Greenhouse Crops

Abstract

A Greenhouse is an indoor covered place where plants are grown and cultivated. In the agriculture field, the crops into greenhouse are highly used due that they provide a little micro-environment that can be easier controlled. At this same context, there are some important parameters that should be monitored at a greenhouse in order to achieve good results at the end of the agricultural production. Two of these parameters are precisely the temperature and humidity that are been commonly measured with manual methods. The wireless sensors networks (WSN) are defined as the collection of sensor nodes that perform a specific task and they are representing one of the technological solutions to automatize and improve the management of crops. This paper summarizes the work carried out to provide an efficient control mechanism of microclimate into greenhouses through the implementation of an infrastructure of Wireless Sensors Network to control environmental parameters. It was possible to probe the effectiveness of this mechanism through the comparative analysis of measures taken using both (1) traditional manual mechanism and (2) automatized with sensors mechanism. A crop of tomato was selected as a case study in which a physic network topology was deployed. Additionally, a management data application was developed taking into account usability parameters in order to create a tool easily accepted by the future users.