Development of a real-time field monitoring system using wireless sensor network technology: an ICT solution to crop environment monitoring

The day-to-day monitoring of agricultural field conditions is very essential for improved crop management and scientific studies. Conventional monitoring of field data is usually performed by collecting data periodically using data loggers or by receiving data from nearest weather stations. However, such monitoring is not easy to perform and requires enormous effort on the part of field users. The Advanced Science and Technology Institute and PhilRice were able to develop a Field Monitoring System (FMON) that integrates various environmental sensors, wireless broadband communication, and high-resolution image-monitoring technology for monitoring field conditions in real-time even under harsh conditions. Each FMON station is equipped with multi-parameter sensors and wireless network camera to acquire significant agro-meteorological data such as air temperatures, rainfall, humidity, solar radiation, wind speed and direction, evaporation, barometric pressure, leaf wetness duration, depth of field water table, soil moisture and temperature, and real-time field images. A reprogrammable device like Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA's) has been used to control and link the interfaces in each station. The FMON communication system uses a wireless LAN (Wi-Fi) access point to transfer data from the remote FMON stations to the main server. Users can access the data through internet or mobile phone via GSM connection to the web server. The developed Field Monitoring System with multi-sensing, ubiquitous networking, and image monitoring capabilities.