IoT-based Drip Irrigation Monitoring and Controlling System using NB-IOT, ESP32+ Raspberry Pi

Resumen

Drip irrigation can be applied in farming systems, in which small amounts of water and fertilizer can be fed uniformly to the crop root zone. In this work, an IoT-based drip irrigation monitoring and controlling strategy for farming systems is proposed. It aims to automatically control the AB-mix nutrition feeding system for the plants. Each sensor and actuator involved in this system was developed to be a single object. Then, the respective objects could be programmed accordingly to perform their function such as controlling the pumps, controlling the valve, detecting the nutrient level, sensing the soil humidity, etc. Each object has a unique identity to allow streamlined communication between the gateway and the objects by employing a light MQTT protocol. The MQTT protocol needs two components namely MQTT Client and MQTT Broker. The MQTT broker was installed on Raspberry Pi by using the Mosquitto platform whereas the MQTT Client was installed on each ESP32 for sensing or controlling the environmental parameters involved in the drip irrigation process, real-time data acquisition from sensors and actuators, and the subsequent analysis can be monitored through an IoT Platform interface ThingBoard joined with KNIME. The wireless communications are supported by the low-power wide-area network NB-IoT in a Fog Computing Layer. Finally, for the validation of the system proposed Proteus, for hardware simulation, iFogSim for simulation computing gateways, and Packet Tracer for simulation network devices and their environment.