Author(s)

José O. Payero^1*, Ali Mirzakhani Nafchi², Rebecca Davis¹, Ahmad Khalilian²

¹Edisto Research and Education Center, Clemson University, Blackville, SC, USA.
²Department of Agricultural Sciences, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA.

It is undeniable that wireless communication technology has become a very important component of modern society. One aspect of modern society in which application of wireless communication technologies has tremendous potential is in agricultural production. This is especially true in the area of sensing and transmission of relevant farming information such as weather, crop development, water quantity and quality, among others, which would allow farmers to make more accurate and timely farming decisions. A good example would be the application of wireless communication technology to transmit soil moisture data in real time to help farmers make irrigation scheduling decisions. Although many systems are commercially available for soil moisture monitoring, there are still many important factors, such as cost, limiting widespread adoption of this technology among growers. Our objective in this study was, therefore, to develop and test an affordable wireless communication system for monitoring soil moisture using Decagon EC-5 sensors. The new system uses Arduino-compatible microcontrollers and communication systems to sample and transmit values from four Decagon EC-5 soil moisture sensors. Developing the system required conducting lab calibrations for the EC-5 sensors for the microcontroller operating in either 10-bit or 12-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) resolution. The system was successfully tested in the field and reliably collected and transmitted data from a wheat field for more than two months.

Wireless Communication, Soil Moisture Sensors, Arduino, Decagon EC-5, Calibration, Irrigation Scheduling, Internet-Of-Things

Payero, J. , Nafchi, A. , Davis, R. and Khalilian, A. (2017) An Arduino-Based Wireless Sensor Network for Soil Moisture Monitoring Using Decagon EC-5 Sensors. Open Journal of Soil Science, 7, 288-300. doi: 10.4236/ojss.2017.710021.