Wireless Sensor Network for Smart Agriculture using ZigBee Protocol

Abstract

The research carried out in this work shows that ONU estimated in 2013 that there are currently 168 countries affected by desertification and that by 2030, almost half of the world's population will be living in areas with high water shortages. Agriculture is the economic sector that consumes the most water in Brazil and in the world, according to the National Water Agency of Brazil. Precision farming is increasingly essential for the sustainable development of agriculture. The automation of information management and data collection in agriculture through sensor networks is extremely important for the sustainable agriculture development. These data guided this project that had the objective of developing a wireless, flexible and simple sensing system that can be applied in any environment, transmitting its information to a central where the data can be stored and analyzed, besides providing a more accurate irrigation system for saving water resources. This project did not aim at the analysis of sensor data, but only the tests with modules of radio frequency transmission working with microcontrollers. This study allowed the development of a system with low energy consumption, using the ZigBee communication protocol with wireless Xbee modules, and conducting tests involving soil temperature and soil moisture measurements, also making possible through the collected data, future academic studies in the agronomic area.