2017 IEEE 3rd International Conference on Sensing, Signal Processing and Security (ICSSS)
IoT Enabled Plant Soil Moisture Monitoring
Using Wireless Sensor Networks
A.M.Ezhilazhahi1 and P.T.V.Bhuvaneswari2
Department of Electronics Engineering
Madras Institute of Technology
ezhil51093@gmail.com1 and ptvbmit@gmail.com2
Abstract:In recent years, the increasing demand on organic farming
necessitates continuous monitoring of plant health. In order to
ensure the quality and quantity this becomes more essential. Hence,
the objective of this research is to develop a remote monitoring
system that continuously monitors the soil moisture of the plant.
The Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is integrated with Internet of
Things (IoT) to achieve the above objective. Further, to enhance
the network lifetime, Exponential Weighted Moving Average
(EWMA) event detection algorithm is adopted in the proposed
research.
Keywords: Organic farming, Plant health, soil moisture, Wireless
Sensor Networks, Internet of Things, Exponential Weighted
Moving Average
I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is the technology,
in which the data collected from the field of interest is
transmitted through wireless link. WSN can be used in
various fields such as monitoring, wireless measurements,
controlling, etc. In the field of precision agriculture and
organic farming, it is important to continuously monitor the
fields as they are site specific. Monitoring plant health is
essential which enriches the productivity of food grains. Soil
moisture is one of the primitive factor for plant health. The
water that remains in soil as a thin film aid in supplying
nutrients to the plant growth[1].
The main objective of this paper, is to establish a
plant soil moisture monitoring system which enables the
user to monitor the plant health remotely. For wireless
communication, Zigbee technology is used to collect data
which is then transferred to the server. In order to increase
the lifetime of WSN, Event Detection Algorithm (EDA) is
adopted.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows : Section
II deals with the literature related to plant health monitoring
system. Section III describes the proposed research. The
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performance of the monitoring system is discussed in
Section IV. Finally, Section V concludes the paper with
future directions.
II. LITERATURE SURVEY
In [2], the authors have developed a greenhouse
automatic control system based on WSN to monitor the
indoor environment. Based on the information received, the
indoor environment is controlled and monitoring the crops is
carried out which prevent the plant from blight and harmful
insects. The data collected is stored either in a database or
in a server which is controlled by the user remotely.
In [3], the authors have analyzed the growth of
sweet potatoes under controlled and exposed environment.
The miniature greenhouse setup is built that monitors
various parameters namely temperature and humidity of
green house, and temperature of soil. According to
restrictions in parameter value, green house setup is
controlled via relay switches connected to Aurdino based
embedded unit.
In [4] the authors have developed a temperature and
humidity monitoring system of soil based on WSN that uses
GPRS as a gateway platform. The temperature and humidity
sensor are placed on plant species. The data from these
sensors are collected continuously and stored in atos pc
software which is open source. Then it is uploaded to server
through atos pc server for remote monitoring.
From the literature survey made, most of the
monitoring system has been developed for controlled
environment, i.e for green house rather than exposed
environment. In this paper soil moisture monitoring system
using WSN is developed for an open environment. Further,
in order to enhance lifetime of WSN, Exponential Weighted
Moving Average (EWMA) EDA is used.
 2017 IEEE 3rd International Conference on Sensing, Signal Processing and Security (ICSSS)

IV. PROPOSED WORK

This section enumerates the proposed research, which
involves
a) Sensing and Transmitter Module
b) Receiver Module
c) IoT enablement
d) Event detection algorithm

Fig.1 depicts the proposed soil moisture monitoring system.

Figure 2. Soil Moisture sensor

Figure 3. Sensor interfaced with PIC microcontroller and Zigbee

Figure 1. Proposed Soil Moisture Monitoring System
A) SENSING AND TRANSMITTER MODULE
Fig.2 shows the sensing module that consists of a soil
moisture detection probe and sensor board with LM393. The
detection probe is dipped into plant for moisture
detection.The sensor board is connected to PIC
microcontroller via 3 pins such as VCC, GND, analog
output.
Fig.3 shows the interface between soil moisture
sensor and PIC microcontroller. PIC micro controller is used
in the proposed research as it is reconfigurable easily. PIC
16F877A is cheaper when compared to other
microcontroller. It has an inbuilt Analog to Digital Converter
(ADC) which converts the analog values of sensors to
digital.The digitized data is transmitted by the Zigbee Tx.
In the proposed research, CC2500 Zigbee pair is
used whose transceiver is highly sensitivity and cost
effective. It consist of three Light emitting Diode (LED)
which represent indication for power supply, transmission,
and reception. The frequency ranges from 2400MHz -
2483.5MHz. The entire sensing and transmitter module is
battery powered.
B) RECEIVER MODULE
Fig.4 shows the receiver module containing a
Zigbee receiver and a processor. Raspberry Pi 3 is used and
it has various features such as ethernet port, Xbee socket,
program memory (RAM), CPU, power source connector.
Then, the data is transferred to cloud using wired link.

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 2017 IEEE 3rd International Conference on Sensing, Signal Processing and Security (ICSSS)

In order to increase lifetime of WSN, EWMA

algorithm is adopted. The data sent to the cloud periodically
whenever the value falls below or above the two predefined
thresholds.

D)EVENT DETECTION ALGORITHM

Major disadvantage of WSN is energy depletion

due to the communication among sensor nodes. EDA is
adopted to overcome the above issue. EWMA is one of the
threshold based EDA which is used in this research, in order
to set the control limits of soil moisture. EWMA chart
methodology is a more and appropriate tool for detecting
small shifts of location [5] &[6]. The mathematical model of
EWMA is defined as below:

Figure 4. Receiver Module EWMAt = Zt = λxt + (1− λ) Zt −1 (1)

for t=1,2,3,4……,n
C) IoT ENABLEMENT
Where,
Internet of Things (IoT) is a inter-networking which t= no of observation at periodic intervals
enables to connect number of physical objects or devices to
Ȝ= weighted average based on the previous values and
internet. These devices can collect, exchange and store data.
ranges between 0 and 1
IoT cloud provides a data storage in which the data from
these devices can be stored and viewed at remote access. x= obtained value
Dropbox is the cloud storage utilized in this research which Zt-1= previous value of Zt
is shown in Fig.5. Dropbox offers free cloud storage service
upto 2GB. A file is created that shows the occurrence of Upper Control Limit (UCL) and Lower Control Limit (LCL)
daily event. are computed using equation (2) and (3),

λ (2)
UCL = μ0 + Lσ
(2 − λ)[1 − (1 − λ ) ]2t

λ
LCL = μ0 − Lσ (3)
(2 − λ )[1 − (1− λ ) 2t ]
Where,
μ0=Mean;L=width of the control limits ;ı = standard
deviation from the moving range chart

V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

IoT enabled soil moisture monitoring system using

WSN have been implemented in real time. Fig.7 and 8
shows soil moisture sensor immersed into soil, it displays
percentage of water present in the soil on LCD. The data
received from the sensors is then transmitted through Zigbee
transceiver to the Raspberry Pi, from which the data are
uploaded to the cloud. When a soil moisture sensor is
Figure 5. Cloud enablement immersed in dry soil, it gives 0% reading. As the water is
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 2017 IEEE 3rd International Conference on Sensing, Signal Processing and Security (ICSSS)

poured to soil increases, the reading is found to be increased. From Fig.9, the three LEDs present in Zigbee Rx blinks that
indicate the reception of data.

Figure 7. Soil moisture sensor embedded into plant soil

Figure 10. Files created in Dropbox

Fig.10 represent the daily created files. Each file

consists of four reading of soil moisture content taken at
regular intervals. The data from the file is extracted and
shown in Table 1.
TABLE 1

Date 6am 10am 2pm 6pm

03/04/2017 86 72 58 52
04/04/2017 46 76 54 47
05/04/2017 42 38 22 16
Figure 8. Moisture content displayed on LCD 06/04/2017 11 78 63 48
07/04/2017 41 84 67 51
Fig.8, shows the value of moisture content present in 08/04/2017 47 41 33 24
the soil which is displayed on the LCD. When the data is 09/04/2017 19 13 6 2
transmitted by the Zigbee it is indicated by LED. 10/04/2017 84 71 64 49

Figure 9. Image of data receiving at the receiver module

Figure 11. Control chart of EWMA

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 2017 IEEE 3rd International Conference on Sensing, Signal Processing and Security (ICSSS)

Fig.11 represent the control chart of EWMA event Of Environmental Research And Development, Vol. 7,PP.No
detection algorithm. The data obtained from the sensor is 780-786, 2012.
given as input to the EWMA algorithm. This algorithm
[6] Romeo Mawonike And Vinscent Nkomo. “Univariate
specifies the limit which is considered as threshold values
Statistical Process Control Of Super Saver Beans: A Case Of
for WSN. From the plot UCL and LCL can be 55 and 35
Rmv Supermarket, Zimbabwe”. Journal Of Management
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And Science , Vol.5,PP.No 48-58, 2015.
VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK [7] Haider Raza N, Girijeshprasad,Yuhuali . “Ewma Model
Based Shift-Detection Methods For Detecting Covariate
Indian farmers are facing a lot of problems, but the Shifts In Non-Stationary Environments”.Patternrecognition,
advancement of wireless sensor networks in agriculture Science Direct ,Vol.48, PP.No659–669, 2015.
would be promising in the present scenario of water scarcity
and unpredictable weather conditions. This paper provides [8] Neha Khanna, Gurmohan Singh , D.K. Jain, 4manjit
implementation of WSN based soil moisture monitoring Kaur . “Design And Development Of Soilmoisture Sensor
system. As WSN is battery operated to enhance the lifetime. And Response Monitoring System”. International Journal
EWMA event detection algorithm is used which generate Of Latest Research In Science And Technology Vol. 3, PP
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time, the nodes are in sleep state which can save their [9] Zigbee Cc2500 Data Sheet:
energy.This work can also be further extended by www.Ti.Com/Lit/Ds/Swrs040c/Swrs040c.Pdf
considering more than one sensor module.
[10] Jeonghwan Hwang, Changsun Shin And Hyun Yoe .
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