Solar powered WSN for monitoring environment and soil parameters by specific app for mobile devices usable for early flood prediction or water savings

This paper describes the design and realization of a smart electronic system, based on a Wireless Sensor Network, for wide-area monitoring of availability level and rapid changes of the water presence in the monitored soil in order to guarantee flood prediction, water savings in the optimized farmland irrigation, waste reduction and optimal use of water resources where its availability is low. The designed sensor node, by means of the different embedded sensors, is capable of detecting environmental parameters, the solar radiation level and soil temperature and moisture (i.e. water volume content) values. The sensors communicate with a central processing unit located on board, used both as data processing unit and as Wi-Fi transceiver to receive/transmit the sensors data. The user near a sensor node, by a tablet or smartphone with an appropriate app, can collect information provided from sensors and share them with all users who use the same app on the Cloud, through peer to peer Wi-Fi or other internet connection.