Ad-Hoc MultiLevel Wireless Sensor Networks

for Distributed Microclimatic Diffused Monitoring

in Precision Agriculture
Abel Rodrguez de la Concepcin, Riccardo Stefanelli, Daniele Trinchero
iXem Labs Politecnico di Torino, Torino, To, 10129, Italy
Abstract The paper presents an innovative solution for
the realization of wireless sensor networks suitable to
characterize the microclimatic behavior in agriculture fields.
The nodes are equipped with sensing units to measure
several physical parameters. They are designed in order to
minimize power consumption, being able to work for a whole
season without any energy harvester. The network is
implemented at two levels. Data from distributed sensing
units are initially collected via a single-hop connection and
then forwarded to the Internet gateway via a multi-hop
transmission scheme. The two levels use interchangeable
ISM frequencies, thanks to the design of dual band loop
antennas. In this way, flexibility and scalability can be easily
reached. The trial that is currently tested in Montepulciano,
Italy, has initially evidences problems originated by package
permeability to humidity and water. Once the issue has been
solved, reliability has reached 99%.
Index Terms Precision Agriculture, Wireless Sensor
Networks, Distributed Sensing Systems, NLOS antennas.

generated by occasional floods and the probability of

weeds;
amount of solar radiation received by the fruits, to
avoid burning effects and to choose the correct
harvesting timing;
leaves wetness, to prevent attacks by fungal diseases
and insects.
As a matter of fact, already available weather stations
can provide the listed information. Unfortunately, the
commercial ones are characterized by heavy power
consumption and reduced deployment flexibility. Most
important, measurements should be performed using
devices with minimal dimensions, embedded within or
around the plant, without the need of external power
suppliers, as well as heavily sized energy harvesters.
Finally, depending on the type and location of the plant,
the number, location and typology of the listed parameters
may significantly vary (in the ground, inside or above the
plant, in front of the vegetation), and this cannot be
obtained by a simple weather station.

I. INTRODUCTION
Weather forecast represents a fundamental component
in agriculture. Thanks to weather predictions, it is possible
to prevent fungal and/or insect infections, as well as to
program in the most effective way plants watering, sun
exposal, or hailstorm protection. In a countryside
environment, especially in hilly, mountain or costal ones,
standard predictions are not sufficient: regional, municipal
and even sub-municipal micro-weather evolutions may
significantly impact timing and intensity of events
requiring any farmers action. Even if several
meteorological web platforms provide weather forecasts at
a local level, when farming evolves towards precision,
additional information about the current state of the fields
is needed, and the information should be the densest
possible.
Parameters of interest include, but they are not only
limited to:
temperature within the plant leaves and above the
plant, to monitor risks related to excessive sun
exposition (during summer), as well as nighttime
frost flowers (during spring);
humidity within the plant and inside the terrain, to
monitor the efficiency of plants watering, damages

978-1-4799-5519-0/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE

II. WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK SOLUTION

To address the mentioned needs, we adopted a double
level wireless sensor network (WSN) solution. WSN are
extensively used in agriculture [1]. In our configuration,
each physical sensor (either temperature, humidity,
radiation, wetness, etc) is implemented as an independent,
single node (SN1) of a 1st level WSN with limited range
and single hop structure. The SN1 is equipped with a
wireless interface and a small battery, sufficient for the
whole season. The SN1 is designed to be extremely
compact, ergonomic and small. Each SN1 communicates
the acquired datum to a collector node (CN), which
mounts two wireless interfaces: the access point (AP1) of
the 1st level WSN, and the node (SN2) of a 2nd level WSN,
characterized by extended range, multi-hop structure. The
access point (AP2) of this network is directly interfaced to
the Internet by means of either 3G, WiFi, or LAN access.
The whole network topology is illustrated in Fig. 1.
This solution is extremely flexible, since all SN1s are
characterized by very small dimensions and extremely low
power consumption and can avoid harvesters. Also, each

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Fig. 2. Sensor Node construction scheme.

The information is processed by the system on chip which
converts data from the sensing unit and transmits through the
transceiver CC1110 from Texas Instruments.

Fig. 1. Sensor Network Multilayer scheme.

Each sensor node (SN1) is connected to an access point
(AP1), which acts also as a node (SN2) of a second level
network, coordinated by a unique access point (AP2),
connected to the Internet.

minimum battery capacity should be of 41.67 mAh, the

minimum solar panel power is 16 mW, with a minimum
required area of 2 square centimeters.
As sensing units, the following components have been
used:
for humidity and temperature, the Sensirion model
SHT21 with filter CAP SF2, mounted in the Ambient
Weather SRS100 Pagoda Temperature and Humidity
Radiation Shield;
for leaf wetness, the LWET model from EME
Systems: an artificial leaf surface constructed on a
thin fiberglass circuit board
for solar radiation, the SRS-100 from Pace Scientific,
a silicon photodiode working in the Spectral range
between 400 and 1100 nanometers

AP1 can collect data from a relative large number of

sensors, and its SN2 interface can employ an external
antenna to increase coverage capability towards the AP2
via a direct or multi-hop link.
III. SN1, CN AND AP2 CONSTRUCTION SCHEME
The SN1 is constructed according to the scheme
reported in Fig. 2. The sensing unit is connected to the
ADC port of an RF System on Chip powered by a
standard coin battery. Since limited computational effort is
needed, a CC1110 System on Chip is sufficient as
microcontroller and transceiver. It is configured to work
either in the 433 or 868 MHz bands, depending on
propagation conditions.
The CN and AP2 are constructed according to the
scheme reported in Fig. 3, where the power supply
subsystem is present only in the CN. As a microcontroller,
the ultra low power MSP430F1611 from Texas Instrument
is used: it is characterized by a 16-bit RISC CPU up to 8
MHz, 1.1 uA absorption in standby mode, 14.4 mW
absorption in operational mode. As transceivers, two
Texas Instruments CC1101 are used.
The CN can be assembled with a photovoltaic harvester,
controlled by a power management chip from Texas
Instrument (model BQ25570). Alternatively, a simple
battery can be used. The solar panel can be embedded over
the CN case, since the required dimensions are extremely
small. Assuming maximum current consumption of 50mA
in TX Mode (overestimated), a transmission time of 300
ms per SN1 every 5 minutes and an average of 10 SN1s
per CN, yields to an active time of 0.24 h/day.
Consequently, the power consumption is 58.34 mWh /day.
Taking into account 3 days of darkness per week the

IV. ELECTROMAGNETIC FRONT-END

To maximize its efficiency in a farming scenario (hilly,
with dense vegetation, non line of site conditions) the 1st
and 2nd level WSNs have been configured to work in two
independent interchangeable ISM frequency bands: 433
and 868 MHz. At the AP2 level, two separate transceivers,

Fig. 3. Collector Node construction scheme. For both the

AP1 and SN2 interfaces, CC1101 transceivers are used

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connected to standard dipole antennas, are configured. The

same happens at the CN level, where one transceiver can
work as SN2, leaving the role of AP1 to the other one.
Frequency of operation is varied by interchanging the role
of the AP1 and SN2. At the SN1 level, a dual band
magnetic antenna, which has proved to exhibit maximum
efficiency when mounted among leaves [1], is used. In this
way, the whole system is interchangeable, and the 1st and
2nd level WSN can commute their frequency bands,
depending on the characteristics of the vegetation and
landscape.
The design of the dual band loop antenna is derived
from a methodology previously developed for the
synthesis of compact small magnetic radiators [2] In the
case of the single band loop, the matching circuit is
realized by inserting two transmission lines between the
loop terminals and the transceiver, to cancel the reactance
of the loop, while the resistance is chosen in order to
match the transmission lines one [3]. For the case of the
dual band one, the solution is obtained by selecting a loop
resonating at 433 MHz, which by chance exhibits a second
resonance in the surroundings of 868 MHz. The exact
matching is obtained by introducing a flower shape, which
allows, according to [3], a reduction of antenna
dimensions, but also to vary the real part of the antenna
impedance. Optimizing a functional, it is possible to select
the number and depth of the petals that allow the best
energetic matching, as shown in Fig.4. This result was
obtained with 16 petals, depth 3 cm, radius of the
inclosing circle 5.5 cm. As far as the reactance is
concerned, the same matching technique introduced in [2]
is applied, with the insertion of transmission lines in
series. Even if a perfect matching cannot be obtained on
both frequencies, an acceptable trade-off is reached with
1.3 cm lines. The resulting SN1 is shown in Fig. 5a. Fig.
5b shows the simulated and measured Kurokawas
reflection coefficient (recalculated from standard 50 ohm
measurements).

VII. CONCLUSION
The paper illustrates the design and realization of a
WSN for precision agriculture, where several physical
parameters are detected all around the plant. Infinitesimal
dimensions and extremely low power consumptions allow
a dense deployment with precision monitoring. The WSN
is made up of two interchangeable networks operating at
two different ISM frequency bands. The band flexibility is
possible thanks to an innovative dual band reconfigurable
loop antenna. The system is currently under test in the
Boscarelli vineyards in Montepulciano (Italy), with
impressive reliability and durability (99%). For this
reason, we are now working to integrate the WSN scheme
in order to include also video details [4].
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Authors thank Boscarelli Vineyards for giving access to
their premises during the experimentation activities.
REFERENCES
[1] Chaudhary, D. D., Nayse, S. P., & Waghmare, L. M.
(2011). Application of wireless sensor networks for
greenhouse parameter control in precision agriculture.
International Journal of Wireless & Mobile Networks
(IJWMN) Vol, 3(1), 140-149.
[2] Stefanelli, R., Demaria, M., Marroncelli, M., & Trinchero,
D. (2012, January). Magnetic front-end with complex
geometry for application of wireless sensor networks in
water and liquids. In Wireless Sensors and Sensor Networks
(WiSNet), 2012 IEEE Topical Conference on (pp. 5-8).
IEEE.
[3] Carvallo, N., Stefanelli, R., & Trinchero, D. (2013, May).
Wireless interfaces for sensor networks embedded in tough
environments. In Electromagnetic Theory (EMTS),
Proceedings of 2013 URSI International Symposium on (pp.
1027-1030). IEEE.
[4] de la Concepcion, A. R., Stefanelli, R., & Trinchero, D.
(2014, January). Adaptive wireless sensor networks for
high-definition monitoring in sustainable agriculture. In
Wireless Sensors and Sensor Networks (WiSNet), 2014
IEEE Topical Conference on (pp. 67-69). IEEE.

Fig. 4. Real (red continuous line) and Imaginary (blue

dashed line)Parts of the Loop impedance after optimization.
The obtained values satisfy the requirements of the CC1110
datasheets

Fig. 5. Left: SN1 hosting the dual band antenna, the radio,
the sensor and the battery. Right: Kurokawas reflection
coefficient [dB], simulated (red) and measured (dotted blue)

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