Sensing Inside a Greenhouse Through Wireless Sensor Networks - An Emerging Technology

What is a Wireless Sensor Network?

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of several distributed wireless sensor nodes that sense vibration, noise, and temperature. Each node has its own memory, battery, a processor and a sensor and is autonomous. These nodes are reliable, heterogeneous, scalable, fault tolerant and they require less power consumption.

In today's world WSN are used everywhere say in traffic controlling systems, in forests to detect fire, in green houses to monitor plants, in military to monitor spy activities, in houses to monitor water and waste water, in smart houses and in many more places. WSN has become an essential technology to live with.

WSN in Greenhouse monitoring:

A greenhouse is a place where plants are grown. To set up WSN in a greenhouse the nodes are placed on leaves and crops. The base node is responsible for collecting data from all nodes and communicating with the main server or computer.

For whom?

WSN for greenhouse monitoring is required for the greenhouse owner who wants maximum cultivation of crops in any environmental conditions.

The WSN nodes sense following:


Temperature
Level of Carbon Dioxide
Light
Humidity
Radiation

Monitoring these environmental factors continuously helps to gather information about the crops and plants in the greenhouse. Information collected is further manipulated to manage productivity of crops. Whenever there is a change rather than expected, i.e. temperature increase or decreases suddenly, the manager is notified about the condition of affected area using text message, or call or e-mail or any other thing like buzzer by the data communication system. Manager then takes action accordingly.

WSN nodes communicate with each other and share important data that will be useful for network. Network topology used for such networks depends on total area of the greenhouse, cost and other factors.

Data stored using sensor nodes on the computer is then manipulated and meaningful interpretation is obtained using data mining, knowledge management methods.

It provides faster deployment, installment flexibility for sensors, and better sturdiness than wired networks.

Conclusion:

A Wireless Sensor Network is a measurement tool. WSN applied in greenhouse evaluates and maintains growth of crops. It saves cost and energy of wiring and connecting all nodes. It only costs to set up and maintain the network. It is very convenient to handle greenhouse in real-time more efficiently. It is better to use such technology rather than wasting money in poor estimations and labor that is typical faced during crop cultivation.

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