A smart farming alternative for small Pomegranate farms of India

A promising application of Wireless Sensor Networks(WSN) is their use for precision agriculture. Advancements in WSNs has made it possible to record and monitor the real time weather, soil and crop growth parameters precisely, thus optimizing the use of water and fertilizers. This paper explores the technology of WSN for the small and marginal Pomegranate farmers of drought prone region of Western India. Pomegranate grows well in semi arid regions. Hence it has proved to be a vital cash crop in these regions. However in the recent years unseasonal rains have caused huge losses due to onset of humidity prone diseases like Bacterial Blight. The proposed work aims at developing wireless sensor nodes for monitoring soil and atmospheric conditions. The nodes will utilize the ARM-LPC2148 processor, various application specific sensors and a low range communication module CC2550. The software modules will be developed in Embedded C. The recorded parameters will be shared over the internet for database creation and for expert advice.