Efficient irrigation water management using cost effective wireless sensor and actuator networks

Pakistan's economy is mostly based on agriculture which is heavily dependent on water availability. Due to the environmental changes and mismanagement, water is becoming a scarce resource in many areas of the country. To cope up with such shortage of water in country, an IT based irrigation control system should be implemented that could deal with monitoring and distribution of water. Realizing the need, a cost effective Wireless Sensor and Actuator Network (WSAN) for Irrigation water management that ensures proper monitoring of the field with instant and precise decision making is proposed in this paper. The WSAN is developed using indigenous designed sensor and actuator nodes that acquires weather/environmental and soil moisture values of agricultural field and provides controlled water supply to only those areas of field where the water is needed and in a required quantity. Newly designed broadcast based protocol is used to establish WSAN which follows request-acknowledgement pattern and directional packet forwarding for reduced quantity of communication. The proposed system is providing three fold cost effectiveness through reduced hardware/software cost low communication cost and reduced human labor cost. In addition to such benefits, water conservation is the primary benefit of system without effecting the crop needs and growth.