Wireless Sensor Network for Orchard Management

Agro-meteorological parameters monitoring plays an important role in orchard management. For a project named `Digital Orchard' funded by local provincial government of China, a wireless sensor network was designed and developed with the aim of remote real-time monitoring and collecting of soil and atmospheric data. The system utilizes a wireless technology for data communication and data transmission cross sensing nodes in a network cluster. Route enhancing is proposed with an aim to facilitate node distribution in orchard and regular network maintenance. The topology of wireless sensing cluster, hardware and software design of wireless node and routing enhancement are also elaborated. The testing result shows that the proposed scheme has the capability of robust data transmission, high sensing accuracy of micro-meteorological parameters and excellent data consistency. The design method proposed in the paper is also suitable for large area of orchard monitoring system.