Irrigation pivot-center connected at low cost for the reduction of crop water requirements

Irrigation, particularly pivot-center, is widely used around the world to fill the need of crop watering. This method of irrigation has a low efficiency compared to other methods of irrigation such as drip systems and generally they use water without consider the real need of plants. In this paper we propose an automation system based on the Internet of Things (IoT), Geographic Information System (GIS) and quasi real-time in the cloud of water requirements to improve the efficiency of water use. Indeed, each segment of the pivot-center moves at a different speed compared to others; thus, must be individually controlled to optimize the yield of irrigation. Moreover, it necessary to integrate factors such as stage of crops' development, heterogeneity of soil, runoff, drainage, soil components, nutrients and moisture content. In this paper we develop a complete system integrating sensors, GIS, Internet of Things and cloud computing. This approach allows to automate fine-grained the consumption of water without decreasing the yield. In addition to that, the collect of data and the soil moisture measurement will allow to adapt coefficient of evapotranspiration to local weather without having to resort to lysimetric measures. The proposed architecture allows to store and treat real-time, time series data and low-priority data such as 3D images used in digital phenotyping field which are treated with batch processing.