166 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 63, NO.

1, JANUARY 2015

Automated Irrigation System Using a Wireless

Sensor Network and GPRS Module
Joaquín Gutiérrez, Juan Francisco Villa-Medina, Alejandra Nieto-Garibay, and Miguel Ángel Porta-Gándara

Abstract— An automated irrigation system was developed to using measurements of infrared canopy temperatures, ambient air
optimize water use for agricultural crops. The system has a temperatures, and atmospheric vapor pressure deficit values to
distributed wireless network of soil-moisture and temperature determine when to irrigate broccoli using drip irrigation [5].
sensors placed in the root zone of the plants. In addition, a
gateway unit handles sensor information, triggers actuators, and Irrigation systems can also be automated through information on
transmits data to a web application. An algorithm was developed volumetric water content of soil, using dielectric moisture sensors
with threshold values of temperature and soil moisture that was to control actuators and save water, instead of a pre-determined
programmed into a microcontroller-based gateway to control irrigation schedule at a particular time of the day and with a
water quantity. The system was powered by photovoltaic panels specific duration. An irrigation controller is used to open a
and had a duplex communication link based on a cellular-
Internet interface that allowed for data inspection and irrigation solenoid valve and apply watering to bedding plants (impatiens,
scheduling to be programmed through a web page. The petunia, salvia, and vinca) when the volumetric water content of
automated system was tested in a sage crop field for 136 days and the substrate drops below a set point [6].
water savings of up to 90% compared with traditional irrigation Other authors have reported the use of remote canopy tem-
practices of the agricultural zone were achieved. Three replicas perature to automate cotton crop irrigation using infrared ther-
of the automated system have been used successfully in other
places for 18 months. Because of its energy autonomy and low mometers. Through a timed temperature threshold, automatic
cost, the system has the potential to be useful in water limited irrigation was triggered once canopy temperatures exceeded
geographically isolated areas. the threshold for certain time accumulated per day. Automatic
Index Terms— Automation, cellular networks, Internet, irrigation scheduling consistently has shown to be valuable in
irrigation, measurement, water resources, wireless sensor optimizing cotton yields and water use efficiency with respect
networks (WSNs). to manual irrigation based on direct soil water mea-surements
[7].
I. INTRODUCTION An alternative parameter to determine crop irrigation needs
is estimating plant evapotranspiration (ET). ET is affected by

A GRICULTURE uses 85% of available freshwater reso-urces

worldwide, and this percentage will continue to be dominant in water
weather parameters, including solar radiation, temperature,
relative humidity, wind speed, and crop factors, such as stage
of growth, variety and plant density, management elements,
consumption because of population growth and increased food
demand. There is an urgent need to create strategies based on science soil properties, pest, and disease control [8]. Systems based on
and technology for sustainable use of water, including technical,
agronomic, managerial, and ET have been developed that allow water savings of up to
institutional improvements [1]. 42% on time-based irrigation schedule [9]. In Florida,
There are many systems to achieve water savings in various automated switching tensiometers have been used in
crops, from basic ones to more technologically advanced ones. combination with ET calculated from historic weather data to
For instance, in one system plant water status was monitored and control automatic irrigation schemes for papaya plants instead
irrigation scheduled based on canopy temperature distribu-tion of of using fixed scheduled ones. Soil water status and ET-based
the plant, which was acquired with thermal imaging [2]. In irrigation methods resulted in more sustainable practices
addition, other systems have been developed to schedule compared with set schedule irrigation because of the lower
irrigation of crops and optimize water use by means of a crop water volumes applied [10].
water stress index (CWSI) [3]. The empirical CWSI was first An electromagnetic sensor to measure soil moisture was the
defined over 30 years ago [4]. This index was later calculated basis for developing an irrigation system at a savings of 53%
of water compared with irrigation by sprinklers in an area of
Manuscript received January 30, 2013; revised April 15, 2013; accepted 2
May 19, 2013. Date of publication August 19, 2013; date of current version
1000 m of pasture [11]. A reduction in water use under
December 5, 2013. This work was supported by SAGARPA-CONACYT scheduled systems also have been achieved, using soil sensor
under Grant 2009-126183. The Associate Editor coordinating the review and an evaporimeter, which allowed for the adjustment of
process was Dr. Subhas Mukhopadhyay. irrigation to the daily fluctuations in weather or volumetric
The authors are with the Engineering Group, Centro de Investi-gaciones
Biológicas del Noroeste, La Paz 23090, Mexico (e-mail: substrate moisture content [12].
joaquing04@cibnor.mx; jfvilla@cibnor.mx; anieto04@cibnor.mx; A system developed for malting barley cultivations in large
maporta@cibnor.mx). areas of land allowed for the optimizing of irrigation through
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. decision support software and its integration with an in-field
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIM.2015.2276487 wireless sensor network (WSN) driving an irrigation
0018-9456 © 2015 IEEE
GUTIÉRREZ et al.: AUTOMATED IRRIGATION SYSTEM USING A WSN AND GPRS MODULE 167

machine converted to make sprinkler nozzles controllable. mented to motor fault diagnosis [30] and for the monitoring of
The network consisted of five sensing stations and a weather the temperature-sensitive products during their distribution
station. Each of the sensing stations contained a data logger has been proposed [31]. In addition, there are wireless systems
with two soil water reflectometers, a soil temperature sensor, for structural identification under environmental an
and Bluetooth communication. Using the network information operational parameters, such as load in bridges [32].
and the irrigation machine positions through a differential In environmental applications, sensor networks have been used
GPS, the software controlled the sprinkler with application of to monitor a variety of environmental parameters or conditions in
the appropriate amount of water [13]. Software dedicated to marine, soil, and atmospheric contexts [33]. Environmental
sprinkler control has been variously discussed [14]. parameters, including humidity, pressure, tem-perature, soil water
A data acquisition system was deployed for monitoring crop content, and radiation with different spatial and temporal
conditions by means of soil moisture and soil, air, and canopy resolution and for event detection such as disaster monitoring,
temperature measurement in cropped fields. Data were pollution conditions, floods, forest fire, and debris flow is
downloaded using a handheld computer connected via a serial continuously monitored [34]–[36]. Applications in agriculture
port for analysis and storage [15]. Another system used to have been used to provide data for appropriate management, such
achieve the effectiveness of water management was developed as monitoring of environmental condi-tions like weather, soil
based on a WSN and a weather station for Internet monitoring of moisture content, soil temperature, soil fertility, mineral content,
drainage water using distributed passive capillary wick-type and weed disease detection, monitoring leaf temperature,
lysimeters. Water flux leached below the root zone under an moisture content, and monitoring growth of the crop, automated
irrigated cropping system was measured [16]. There are hybrid irrigation facility and storage of agricultural products [37]–[39].
architectures, wireless modules are located inside the green-house
where great flexibility is required, and wired modules are used in Various commercial WSNs exist, ranging from limited and
the outside area as actuator controllers [17]. low-resolution devices with sensors and embedded proces-
The development of WSNs based on microcontrollers and sors to complete and expensive acquisition systems that sup-
communication technologies can improve the current meth-ods of port diverse sensors and include several communication fea-
monitoring to support the response appropriately in real time for tures [40]. Recent advances in microelectronics and wireless
a wide range of applications [18], considering the requirements of technologies created low-cost and low-power components,
the deployed area, such as terrestrial, underground, underwater, which are important issues especially for such systems such as
multimedia, and mobile [19]. These applications involve military WSN [41]. Power management has been addressed in both
operations in scenarios of bat-tlefield, urban combat, and force hardware and software with new electronic designs and
protection, with tasks of presence, intrusion, ranging, imaging, operation techniques. The selection of a microprocessor
detection of chemical, toxic material, biological, radiological, becomes important in power aware design. Modern CMOS
nuclear, and explo-sive [20], [21]. In addition, sensor networks and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technologies
have been used in health care purposes for monitoring, alerting, allowed manufacturers to produce on average every three
assistance, and actuating with security and privacy to support years a enhance generation of circuits by integrating sensors,
real-time data transmission [22]. Vital sign monitoring, such as signal conditioning, signal processing, digital output options,
ECG, heart rate, body temperature, has been integrated in com-munications, and power supply units [42], [43]. For
hospitals and homes through wearable or e-textile providing example, the parallel combination of a battery and a
reports and alerts to personal in case of emergency and tracking supercapacitor has been used to extend the runtime of low-
the location of patients within the hospital limits [23]. WSNs power wireless sensor nodes [44].
have been used to remote monitor healthcare of dependent people Energy harvesting mechanisms have been employed, in cases
at their homes through several biomedical sensors such as ECG, where it is difficult for changing or recharging batteries, hence
blood pressure, body temperature [24], and body motion [25]. this strategy has involved combining it with efficient power
management algorithms to optimize battery lifetime. Power
Home applications comprised wireless embedded sensors and harvesting is a complementary approach that depends on ambient
actuators that enable monitoring and control. For comfort and energy sources, including environmental vibration, human power,
efficient energy management, household devices have been thermal, solar, and wind that can be converted into useable
controlled through sensors that monitor parameters such as electrical energy [45]–[47]. On the other hand, several strategies
temperature, humidity, light, and presence, avoiding waste of have been implemented to reduce power con-sumption, such as
energy [26]. Sensor networks have been used for security pur- power-aware protocols, resource and task management,
poses, based on several sensors such as smoke detectors, gas communication, topology control and routing, models based on
sensors, and motion sensors, to detect possible risk situations that events, and congestion control mechanism to balance the load,
trigger appropriate actions in response, such as send an alert to a prevent packet drops, and avoid network deadlock using a
remote center through wireless communication [27]. combination of predeployed group keys that allow the dynamic
In industrial environments, WSNs have been installed to creation of high security subnetworks and optimizes energy
provide real-time data acquisition for inventory management, to efficiency of sensor networks [48], [49]. For instance, energy-
equipment monitoring for control with appropriate actions, saving strategies have been achieved through scheduling [50],
reducing human errors and preventing manufacturing down-time [51], sleep or wake up schemes, and adaptive radio frequency
[28], [29]. For example, industrial WSN have been imple- (RF) in nodes, and choosing
168 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 63, NO. 1, JANUARY 2015

a network configuration [52]. There are also algorithms to

maximize the network coverage ratio with a predefined
balance the energy consumption in the whole WSN [53], to
reduce both the transmission and the computational loads at
the node level [54], and to estimate online the optimal
sampling frequencies for sensors [55].
In a wireless node, the radio modem is the major power
consuming component; recently, wireless standards have been
established with medium access control protocols to provide
multitask support, data delivery, and energy efficiency per-
formance [56], such as the standards for wireless local area
network, IEEE 802.11b (WiFi) [57] and wireless personal
area network (WPAN), IEEE 802.15.1 (Bluetooth) [58], IEEE
802.15.3 (UWB) [59], and IEEE 802.15.4 (ZigBee) [60], and
those open wireless communication standards for Internet pro- Fig. 1. Configuration of the automated irrigation system. WSUs and a WIU,
tocol version 6 (IPv6) over low-power wireless personal area based on microcontroller, ZigBee, and GPRS technologies.
networks 6LoWPAN [61], [62], wireless highway addressable
remote transducer WirelessHART [63], and ISA100.11a [64]
developed by the International Society of Automation.
In this paper, the development of the deployment of an
automated irrigation system based on microcontrollers and
wireless communication at experimental scale within rural areas
is presented. The aim of the implementation was to demonstrate
that the automatic irrigation can be used to reduce water use. The
implementation is a photovoltaic powered automated irrigation
system that consists of a distributed wireless network of soil
moisture and temperature sensors deployed in plant root zones.
Each sensor node involved a soil-moisture probe, a temperature
probe, a microcontroller for data acquisition, and a radio
transceiver; the sensor mea-surements are transmitted to a
microcontroller-based receiver. This gateway permits the Fig. 2. WSU. (a) Electronic component PCB. (b) Radio modem ZigBee.
automated activation of irrigation when the threshold values of (c) Temperature sensor. (d) Moisture sensor. (e) Rechargeable batteries.
(f) Photovoltaic cell. (g) Polyvinyl chloride container.
soil moisture and temperature are reached. Communication
between the sensor nodes and the data receiver is via the Zigbee
protocol [65], [66] under the IEEE 802.15.4 WPAN. This
server via the public mobile network. The information can be
receiver unit also has a duplex communication link based on a
remotely monitored online through a graphical application
cellular-Internet interface, using general packet radio service
through Internet access devices.
(GPRS) protocol, which is a packet-oriented mobile data service
used in 2G and 3G cellular global system for mobile
communications (GSM). The Internet connection allows the data A. Wireless Sensor Unit
inspection in real time on a website, where the soil-moisture and A WSU is comprised of a RF transceiver, sensors, a
temperature levels are graphically displayed through an microcontroller, and power sources. Several WSUs can be
application interface and stored in a database server. This access deployed in-field to configure a distributed sensor network for the
also enables direct programming of scheduled irrigation schemes automated irrigation system. Each unit is based on the
and trigger values in the receiver according the crop growth and microcontroller PIC24FJ64GB004 (Microchip Technolo-gies,
season management. Because of its energy autonomy and low Chandler, AZ) that controls the radio modem XBee Pro S2 (Digi
cost, the system has potential use for organic crops, which are International, Eden Prairie, MN) and processes information from
mainly located in geographically isolated areas where the energy the soil-moisture sensor VH400 (Vegetronix, Sandy, UT), and the
grid is far away. temperature sensor DS1822 (Maxim Integrated, San Jose, CA).
These components are powered by rechargeable AA 2000-mAh
Ni-MH CycleEnergy batteries (SONY, Australia). The charge is
II. AUTOMATED IRRIGATION SYSTEM
maintained by a photovoltaic panel MPT4.8-75 (PowerFilm
The automated irrigation system hereby reported, consisted of Solar, Ames, IN) to achieve full energy autonomy. The
two components (Fig. 1), wireless sensor units (WSUs) and a microcontroller, radio modem, rechargeable batteries, and
wireless information unit (WIU), linked by radio transceivers that electronic components were encap-sulated in a waterproof
allowed the transfer of soil moisture and temperature data, Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) container (Fig. 2). These components
implementing a WSN that uses ZigBee technology. The WIU has were selected to minimize the power consumption for the
also a GPRS module to transmit the data to a web proposed application.
 GUTIÉRREZ et al.: AUTOMATED IRRIGATION SYSTEM USING A WSN AND GPRS MODULE 169

Start

Request Connection
Get date/time
date and time WIU

INT-RTCC?

Yes Fig. 4. Communication frames between a WSU and the WIU.

Enable
Voltage
Regulator
the date and time to program the RTCC, and periodically
Measure: updates it for synchronization.
Moisture 2) ZigBee Modules: ZigBee (over IEEE 802.15.4) technol-
Temperature
Voltage ogy is based on short range WSN and it was selected for this
battery-operated sensor network because of its low cost, low
Package/Send
power consumption, and greater useful range in comparison
data to WIU with other wireless technologies like Bluetooth (over IEEE
802.15.1), UWB (over IEEE 802.15.3), and Wi-Fi (over IEEE
Disenable
802.11) [67]. The ZigBee devices operate in industrial, scien-
Voltage tific, and medical 2.4-GHz radio band and allow the operation
Regulator
in a so-called mesh networking architecture, which can be
differentiated into three categories: 1) coordinator; 2) router;
Sleep Mode and 3) end device.
From a wide range of commercial ZigBee devices, the
XBee-PRO S2 is an appropriate original equipment manufac-
turer module to establish communication between a WSU and
Fig. 3. Algorithm of wireless sensor unit (WSU) for monitoring the soil- the WIU because of its long-range operation and reliability of
moisture and temperature.
the sensor networking architecture. The XBee-PRO S2 is a RF
modem with integrated chip antenna, 20-pins, and 13 general
1) Single-Chip PIC24FJ64GB004: A 16-bit microcontroller purpose input/output (GPIO) ports available of which four are
with 44-pins and nanoWatt XLP technology that operates in a ADC. It can operate up to a distance of 1500 m in outdoor
range 2.0 to 3.6 V at 8 MHz with internal oscillator. It has up line-of-sight with 170 mA of TX peak current and 45 mA for
to 25 digital input/output ports, 13-, 10-bit analog-to-digital RX current at 3.3 V and power-down current of 3.5 µA.
converters (ADC), two serial peripheral interface modules, The XBee radio modem of each WSU is powered at 3.3 V
two I2C, two UART, 5 16-bit timers, 64 KB of program through a voltage regulator ADP122AUJZ-3.3-R7 (Analog
memory, 8 KB of SRAM, and hardware real-time Devices, Norwood, MA) and interfaced to the host microcon-
clock/calendar (RTCC). The microcontroller is well suited for troller through its serial port, a logic-level asynchronous
this remote application, because of its low-power operating serial, and voltage compatible UART configured at 9600 baud
current, which is 175 µA at 2.5 V at 8 MHz and 0.5 µA for rate, no - parity, 1 - start bit, 1 - stop bit, 8 - data bits.
standby current in sleep mode including the RTCC. The WSUs were configured such as end devices to deploy a
The microcontroller was programmed in C compiler 4.12 networking topology point-to-point based on a coordinator that
(Custom Computer Services, Waukesha, WI) with the appro- was implemented by the XBee radio modem of the WIU. An end
priate algorithm (Fig. 3) for monitoring the soil-moisture device has the following characteristics: 1) it must join a ZigBee
probe through an analog-to-digital port and the soil- PAN before it can transmit or receive data; 2) cannot allow
temperature probe through another digital port, implemented devices to join the network; 3) must always transmit and receive
in 1-Wire communication protocol. A battery voltage monitor RF data through its parent; 4) cannot route data; and
is included through a high-impedance voltage divider coupled 5) can enter low power modes to conserve power and can be
to an analog-to-digital port. The data are packed with the cor- battery powered. The least significant byte of the unique 64-
responding identifier, date, and time to be transmitted via bit address is used to label the information of the soil moisture
XBee radio modem using a RS-232 protocol through two and temperature for each WSU in the network. This byte is
digital ports configured as transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX), registered in the WIU as the identifier (ID) associated to each
respectively. After sending data, the microcontroller is set in WSU. As shown in the sample frames to request date/time,
sleep mode for certain period according to the sensor receive date/time, and send data packaged to the WIU (Fig. 4).
sampling rate desired, whereas the internal RTCC is running. 3) Soil Sensor Array: The sensor array consists of two soil
This operation mode allows energy savings. When the WSU sensors, including moisture and temperature that are inserted in
is launched for first time, the algorithm also inquires the WIU, the root zone of the plants. The VH400 probe was selected to
170 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 63, NO. 1, JANUARY 2015

estimate the soil moisture because of low power consumption

(< 7 mA) and low cost. The probe measures the dielectric
constant of the soil using transmission line techniques at 80
MHz, which is insensitive to water salinity, and provides an
output range between 0 and 3.0 V, which is proportional to the
volumetric water content (VWC) according to a calibration
curve provided by the manufacturer. The sensor was powered
at 3.3 V and monitored by the microcontroller through an
ADC port.
Soil temperature measurements were made through the dig-
ital thermometer DS1822. The sensor converts temperature to
a 12-bit digital word and is stored in 2-B temperature
registers, corresponding to increments of 0.0625 °C. The
temperature is required through a reading command and
transmitted using 1-Wire bus protocol implemented in the
microcontroller through one digital port. The thermometer has
±2.0 °C accuracy over −10 °C to +85 °C temperature range
and a unique 64-bit serial number. The sensor is a 3-pin
single-chip and TO92 package that was embedded in a metal
capsule and sealed in a waterproof PVC cylindrical container.
To calibrate the soil moisture, several samples were
prepared with 1 kg of dry soil from the crop area. Its
composition was loamy sand with 80% sand separate, 4.5%
clay separate, and 15.6% silt separate. The soil water holding
capacity was of 20.7% VWC corresponding to measured
output voltages of 1.45 V. The temperature sensors were Fig. 5. WIU. (a) Electronic component PCB. (b) Master microcontroller.
calibrated through a reference mercury thermometer CT40, (c) Solid state memory. (d) Optical isolators. (e) RS-232 interface. (f) Push
button. (g) Output cables to pumps. (h) Supply cable from charge controller.
with 0.1 °C divisions and a range from −1 °C to 51 °C. The (i) PCV box.
thermometer and the temperature sensors were placed in an
insulated flask filled with mineral oil at 10 °C and 40 °C.
4) Photovoltaic Cell: To maintain the charge of the WSU
batteries, a solar panel MPT4.8-75 was employed. Each solar through a PWM charge controller SCI-120 (Syscom, Mexico).
panel delivers 50 mA at 4.8 V, which is sufficient energy to All the WIU electronic components were encapsulated in a
maintain the voltage of the three rechargeable batteries. A waterproof PVC box as shown in Figs. 5 and 6. The WIU can
MSS1P2U Schottky diode (Vishay, Shelton, CT) is used to be located up to 1500-m line-of-sight from the WSUs placed
prevent the solar module and to drain the battery when is in in the field.
the dark. The solar panel is encapsulated in a 3-mm clear 1) Master Microcontroller: The functionality of the WIU is
polyester film with dimensions of 94 mm × 75 mm. This based on the microcontroller, which is programmed to
flexible panel was mounted on a PVC prismatic base (100 mm perform diverse tasks, as is shown in Fig. 7. The first task of
× 80 mm × 3.17 mm) that is fastened in the upper part of a the program is to download from a web server the date and
PVC pole allowing for the correct alignment of the time through the GPRS module. The WIU is ready to transmit
photovoltaic panel to the sun. The stick is 50 cm of length and via XBee the date and time for each WSU once powered.
12.5 mm of diameter; the lower end of the pole had a tip end Then, the microcontroller receives the information package
to be buried. transmitted by each WSU that conform the WSN.
These data are processed by the algorithm that first identifies
the least significant byte of a unique 64-bit address encap-sulated
B. Wireless Information Unit in the package received. Second, the soil moisture and
The soil moisture and temperature data from each WSU are temperature data are compared with programmed values of
received, identified, recorded, and analyzed in the WIU. The minimum soil moisture and maximum soil temperature to
WIU consists of a master microcontroller PIC24FJ64GB004, activate the irrigation pumps for a desired period. Third, the
an XBee radio modem, a GPRS module MTSMC-G2-SP algorithm also records a log file with the data in a solid state
(MultiTech Systems, Mounds View, MN), an RS-232 inter- memory 24FC1025 (Microchip Technologies, Chandler, AZ)
face MAX3235E (Maxim Integrated, San Jose, CA), two with a capacity of 128 kB. Each log is 12-B long, including soil
electronic relays, two 12 V dc 1100 GPH Livewell pumps moisture and temperature, the battery voltage, the WSU ID, the
(Rule-Industries, Gloucester, MA) for driving the water of the date, and time generated by the internal RTCC. If irrigation is
tanks, and a deep cycle 12 V at 100-Ah rechargeable battery provided, the program also stores a register with the duration of
L-24M/DC-140 (LTH, Mexico), which is recharged by a solar irrigation, the date, and time. Finally, these data and a greenhouse
panel KC130TM of 12 V at 130 W (Kyocera, Scottsdale, AZ) ID are also transmitted
GUTIÉRREZ et al.: AUTOMATED IRRIGATION SYSTEM USING A WSN AND GPRS MODULE 171

2) GPRS Module: The MTSMC-G2-SP is a cellular modem

embedded in a 64-pins universal socket that offers standards-
based quad-band GSM/GPRS Class 10 performance. This
GPRS modem includes an embedded transmission control
protocol/Internet protocol stack to bring Internet connectivity,
a UFL antenna connector and subscriber identity module
(SIM) socket. The module is capable of transfer speeds up to
115.2 K b/s and can be interfaced directly to a UART or
microcontroller using AT commands. It also includes an
onboard LED to display network status.
The GPRS was powered to 5 V regulated by UA7805 (Texas
Instruments, Dallas, TX) and operated at 9600 Bd through a
serial port of the master microcontroller and connected to a PCB
antenna. The power consumption is 0.56 W at 5 V.
In each connection, the microcontroller sends AT commands
to the GPRS module; it inquires the received signal strength
indication, which must be greater than −89 dBm to guarantee a
good connection. In addition, it establishes the communica-tion
with the URL of the web server to upload and download data. If
the received signal strength is poor, then all data are stored into
the solid-state memory of the WIU and the system try to establish
Fig. 6. Inside view of the WIU. (a) Radio modem ZigBee. (b) GPRS module. the connection each hour.
(c) SIM card. (d) GPRS PCB antenna. (e) Pumps relays. 3) Watering Module: The irrigation is performed by con-
trolling the two pumps through 40-A electromagnetic relays
connected with the microcontroller via two optical isolators
CPC1004N (Clare, Beverly. MA). The pumps have a power
consumption of 48 W each and were fed by a 5000-l water
tank.
Four different irrigation actions (IA) are implemented in the
WIU algorithm:
1) fixed duration for manual irrigation with the push button;
2) scheduled date and time irrigations through the web
page for any desired time;
3) automated irrigation with a fixed duration, if at least one
soil moisture sensor value of the WSN drops below the
programmed threshold level;
4) automated irrigation with a fixed duration, if at least one
soil temperature sensor value of the WSN exceeds the
Fig. 7. Algorithm of the master microcontroller in the WIU for the automated
irrigation system. programmed threshold level.

at each predefined time to a web server through HTTP via the

C. Web Application
GPRS module to be deployed on the Internet web application
in real time. Graphical user interface software was developed for real-
When the server receives a request for the web page, it time monitoring and programming of irrigation based on soil
inserts each data to the corresponding field in the database. moisture and temperature data. The software application
This link is bidirectional and permits to change the permits the user to visualize graphically the data from each
threshold values through the website interface; scheduled WSU online using any device with Internet (Fig. 8).
watering or remote watering can be performed. Besides the soil-moisture and temperature graphs, the web
The WIU has also a push button to perform manual irriga- application displays the total water consumption and the kind
tion for a programmed period and a LED to indicate when the of the IA.
information package is received. All the WIU processes can The web application also enabled the user direct program-
be monitored through the RS-232 port. ming of scheduled irrigation schemes and adjusting the trigger
The WIU includes a function that synchronizes the WSUs values in the WIU according to the crop species and season
at noon for monitoring the status of each WSU. In the case management. All the information is stored in a database. The
that all WSUs are lost, the system goes automatically to a web application for monitoring and programming was coded
default irrigation schedule mode. Besides this action, an email in C# language of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. The database
is sent to alert the system administrator. was implemented in SQL Server 2005.
172 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 63, NO. 1, JANUARY 2015

Fig. 10. Gathered data of the WSUs, in the web application of the automated
irrigation system: soil temperatures, soil moisture, and water supplied
(vertical bars indicate automated and scheduled irrigation).

Fig. 8. Web application of the automated irrigation system to remotely in the root zone of the plants. These three units allowed data
supervise the soil moisture and temperature of each WSU and change the redundancy to ensure irrigation control. The algorithm
threshold values and the scheduled irrigation. considered the values from the WSU-54, 55, and 56, if one
reached the threshold values the automated irrigation was
performed.
The pumping rate provided 10 ml/min/drip hole, which was
measured in the automated irrigation zone in six different drip
holes.
In accordance with the organic producer’s experience, a
minimum value of 5% VWC for the soil was established as
the moisture threshold level and 30 °C as the temperature
threshold level for the automated irrigation modes (IA-3 and
IA-4, respectively). Initially, the scheduled irrigation (IA-2) of
35 min/week was used during the first six weeks. After that,
the scheduled irrigation was set at 35 min three times per
Fig. 9. Greenhouse for organic sage production with WSUs located arbitrarily week. Sage cultivation finalized after 136 days.
in different cultivation beds. (a) WSU-55 on bed 2. (b) WSU-56 on bed 12.
(c) WSU-57 on bed 23. WSU-54 was on bed 1.
During the cultivation, several automated irrigation periods
were carried out by the system because of the soil-moisture
(IA-3) or temperature (IA-4) levels, regardless of the
III. IRRIGATION SYSTEM OPERATION scheduled irrigation (IA-2). All data were uploaded each hour
2 to the web server for remote supervision. For instance, data of
The system was tested in a 2400-m greenhouse, located
near San Jose del Cabo, Baja California Sur (BCS), Mexico five days are shown (Fig. 10). The first graph shows soil
(23° 10.841’ N, 109° 43.630’ W) for organic sage (Salvia temperatures. The vertical bars indicate automated irrigation
officinalis) production. The greenhouse had 56 production periods triggered by temperature when soil temperature was
beds covered with plastic. Each bed was 14-m long and above the threshold value (30 °C). The second graph shows
had two black polyethylene tubes with drip hole spac- soil moistures that were above the threshold value (5.0%
ing of 0.2 m. The automated irrigation system was used VWC), and thus the automated irrigation was not triggered by
2 soil moisture. Finally, the last graph shows the total water
to irrigate only 600 m , which corresponded to 14 beds;
whereas, the remaining 42 beds were irrigated by human used by the sage with the corresponding scheduled irrigation
supervision to compare water consumption with the tra- vertical bars for the IA-2. The dots denote the automated and
ditional irrigation practices in this production place. Four scheduled irrigation.
WSUs labeled by the last significant byte of the unique 64-bit Automated irrigation triggered by soil moisture for four
address (WSU-54, 55, 56, and 57) were located in the days are shown in Fig. 11; when the soil moisture value fell
greenhouse at arbitrary points (Fig. 9). below the threshold level of 5.0% VWC, the irrigation system
The WSU-57 unit was used to measure the soil moisture and was activated for 35 min according to IA-3, whereas the soil
temperature in the area (bed 23) where the traditional irrigation temperature remained below the threshold level. Similarly,
practices were employed. The other three units (WSU-54, 55, and Fig. 12 shows automated irrigation triggered by soil temper-
56) were located in beds 1, 2, and 12 to operate the automated ature; when the temperature was above 30 °C, the irrigation
irrigation system with their corresponding soil moisture and system was activated for 5 min according to IA-4, whereas the
temperature sensors situated at a depth of 10 cm soil moisture remained above the threshold level.
 GUTIÉRREZ et al.: AUTOMATED IRRIGATION SYSTEM USING A WSN AND GPRS MODULE 173

Fig. 11. Automated irrigation (vertical bars) triggered by the soil moisture
threshold ≤ 5% VWC.

Fig. 14. Automated irrigation systems for the experimental production of:
sage (top left), thyme (top right), origanum (bottom left), and basil (bottom
right) in San Jose del Cabo, Los Arados, El Pescadero, and El Comitan,
respectively.

250

Fig. 12. Automated irrigation (vertical bars) triggered by the soil temperature 200

threshold ≥ 30 °C.
Current (mA)

150
Temperature (°C)

30 20
c
25 b 15
100
a
20 10
VWC (%)

d
Sleep (4.47 μA)
15 5 50

10

00 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
400 Time (s)
Water m 3 )

300
Fig. 15. WSU current consumption in monitoring and sleep modes.
(

200

100
0
40 60 80 100 120 140
(curve a) was lower than the automated irrigation (curve b).
20
Day

Fig. 13. Daily mean soil temperature (a: traditional; b: automated), daily mean The daily mean VWC for the traditional irrigation practice
soil moisture (c: traditional; d: automated), and accumulated water irrigation (curve c) was almost constant >16%, whereas that for the
volumes (dotted line: traditional; solid line: automated) over the entire sage automated irrigation (curve d) was below 10%. In addition,
cropping season.
the accumulated water used are shown corresponding to 14
beds for each 3
irrigation system. The total water requirement
3
Water consumption with the organic producers’ traditional was 341 m for the traditional one and 29 m for the
irrigation procedure consisted of watering with a 2‖ electrical automated one. Then, the automated irrigation used ∼90% less
pump during 5 h three times per week for the whole water with respect to the traditional irrigation practice.
cultivation period. Under this scheme the volume flow rate Another three automated irrigation systems (Fig. 14) have
measured on site was 10 ml/min/per drip hole, giving a total been tested along 18 months in other places in BCS, Mexico:
of 174 l/drip hole, whilst the automated irrigation system used El Pescadero (23° 21.866’ N, 110° 10.099’ W), El Comitan-
14 l/drip hole. In the entire greenhouse, the sage plants CIBNOR (24° 7.933’ N, 110° 25.416’ W), and Los Ara-dos
presented similar fresh biomass regardless of the irrigation (24° 47.1’ N, 111° 11.133’ W). In these three places,
procedure during the whole production period. The average programmed irrigations (IA-2) were compared with trig-gered
biomass per cut was 110 pounds for the traditional irrigation irrigations (IA-3 and IA-4), water savings ∼60% were
system corresponding to 42 production beds and 30 pounds obtained.
for the automated irrigation system corresponding to 14 beds. For cases such as Los Arados, it was found that the signal
The automated system was tested in the greenhouse for 136 receiving strength was too low and the Internet connection
days (Fig. 13). Daily mean soil moisture and temperature are could not be established, hence in this case all data were
shown, as well as the accumulated water used for both stored into the solid state memory of the WIU.
systems. Both mean temperatures presented similar behavior Power consumption of a WSU was measured through current
for the production period, except for the last 30 days, where oscilloscope (UNI-T UT81B) in the monitoring and sleep
the soil temperature for the traditional irrigation practice operational modes (Fig. 15). Each hour, the soil-moisture
174 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 63, NO. 1, JANUARY 2015

4.5 TABLE II
COMPONENTS FOR WIU
With solar panel
4.25
Voltage (V)

3.75
Without solar panel

3.5
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Day

Fig. 16. Battery charge–discharge cycle of a wireless sensor unit (WSU).

800

700
Solar radiation (W/m 2 )

600

500

400

300 However, the total average power consumption was ∼4 Ah per

200 day considering the two irrigation pumps.
100
The automated irrigation system implemented is a cost-
0 effective alternative for agriculture; the cost of each WSU is
02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
01
Day
∼100 U.S. dollars (Table I), and the WIU cost is ∼1800 U.S.
dollars (Table II).
Fig. 17. Solar radiation along the experiment of charge-discharge cycle of a
wireless sensor unit (WSU).
IV. CONCLUSION
TABLE I
COMPONENTS FOR WSU
The automated irrigation system implemented was found to
be feasible and cost effective for optimizing water resources
for agricultural production. This irrigation system allows
cultivation in places with water scarcity thereby improving
sustainability.
The automated irrigation system developed proves that the
use of water can be diminished for a given amount of fresh
biomass production. The use of solar power in this irrigation
system is pertinent and significantly important for organic
crops and other agricultural products that are geographically
isolated, where the investment in electric power supply would
be expensive.
The irrigation system can be adjusted to a variety of
specific crop needs and requires minimum maintenance. The
modular configuration of the automated irrigation system
allows it to be scaled up for larger greenhouses or open fields.
and temperature data were transmitted to the WIU. Before
In addition, other applications such as temperature monitoring
transmitting the data, the XBee of the WSU was powered on
through the voltage regulator that was enabled for a period of in compost production can be easily implemented. The
20 s by the microcontroller, which was a long enough time for Internet controlled duplex communication system provides a
the radio modem to wake up and transmit the data. Then, the powerful decision-making device concept for adaptation to
total average power consumption was kept at 0.455 mAh. The several cultivation scenarios. Furthermore, the Internet link
charge-discharge cycle of the batteries is shown for 20 days in allows the supervision through mobile telecommunication
the winter with the solar panel connected and disconnected devices, such as a smart-phone.
(Fig. 16) using the data registered by the battery voltage Besides the monetary savings in water use, the importance
monitor. The solar radiation for those days is shown in Fig. of the preservation of this natural resource justify the use of
17. Thus, the photovoltaic panel and the batteries provide this kind of irrigation systems.
sufficient energy to maintain the WSU running for the whole
crop season at almost any latitude, due the low energy ACKNOWLEDGMENT
consumption. The authors would like to thank P. Luna, J. Cobos, A.
The WIU average current consumption because of the Alvarez, C. Soto, M. Cordoba, and J. Mandujano for their
electronic components was of 80 mAh in operational mode. support.
GUTIÉRREZ et al.: AUTOMATED IRRIGATION SYSTEM USING A WSN AND GPRS MODULE 175

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