Leveraging Networked Sensors to Improve Apple Orchard Irrigation: A Lab Prototype

Research on Internet of Things (IoT) technology in agriculture has gained significant attention in recent years, as it offers the potential to revolutionise traditional farming practices by enabling more efficient resource management, increased crop yields, and reduced environmental impact. Similarly, there has been a growing interest in the application of IoT technology specifically for apple orchards; research in this respect needs to be tailored to the unique requirements and constraints of this vertical. This paper proposes a smart irrigation solution for apple orchards using networked sensors that aims to reduce watering costs and efficiently address related practical agricultural constraints. After exploring the various requirements of the apple orchards watering problem, we design a lab prototype for the networked smart irrigation system and conduct measurements to evaluate its effectiveness. As the fieldwork is not possible at the moment of the paper writing due to seasonal limitations, we perform initial, small-scale lab experiments and network emulations. Specifically, we test the effectiveness of the soil moisture sensors, and we emulate in the Cooja simulator the performance of diverse spatial topologies of the networked sensors. The results of the experiments and simulations demonstrate that our proposed approach has the potential to (i) effectively reduce water consumption (ii) align to the corresponding universally accepted soil moisture best practices, and, (ii) tune its performance according to the eventual sensor topology application requirements, by scaling accordingly the number of sensors.