Harnessing wind energy to power sensor networks for agriculture

Agriculture sector in India contributes 16% of GDP and 10% of export earnings. Agriculture sector dominates the Indian economy along with industries and services sector, which determines the growth and sustainability. About 65 per cent of the population relies on agriculture for employment and livelihood. Application of science and technology in agriculture is being practiced in several parts of the country. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) can be used as cost effective measures to improve the agricultural yield. Attempts have been made to use WSNs in improving agricultural yield, monitoring environmental conditions like humidity, soil moisture, temperature, weed disease detection, automated irrigation monitoring the growth of the crop etc. WSNs use batteries to power the sensors. However the life of the battery is limited and the sensors would need to be powered continuously. In this paper we look at recharging the batteries in the sensor nodes in a field by harnessing wind energy. We use data available on wind distribution across the state and also the available wind speed data to determine the energy that can be harvested. We also identify efficient energy aware algorithms to ensure minimal use of energy during data transfer between nodes. Our paper suggests an implementation where wind energy is harnessed to power the sensor nodes. In addition to the minimization of gross power consumption, the objective is the distribution of power consumption across the network, thereby extend the overall network battery life. We propose an adaptive power-aware routing algorithm using a combination of various proposed routing algorithms. We implement an efficient energy management system using the (Distributed Energy Harvesting Aware Routing) DEHAR algorithm and implement the same using Zigbee transmission. We also implement synchronous sleep scheduling to minimize power consumption in WSN.