Optimized power and water allocation in smart irrigation systems

Abstract

Agriculture has a significant role in countries’ economy, but irrigation process consumes both power and water resources. Since in agriculture the goal is to maximize crop’s yields with minimize costs, it is important to design a national smart irrigation system with optimal allocation of power and water resources especially in a plantation area with little rains. In this work, an optimized on-demand smart irrigation system is proposed to manage the allocation of the consumed power and water in agriculture field. The system controls irrigation process by utilizing Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) to collect real-time data from the field using sensors. Raspberry pi takes appropriate decision about irrigation process according to received data from sensor nodes, and commands are sent from it to actuator nodes. Secured Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol with Transport Layer Security (TLS) authentication protocol is used in managing the data exchange in the network over Wi-Fi technology. In addition, an optimal power and water consumptions formula is derived using Lagrange Multiplier method to allocate resources in an optimal way depending on watering demands. Both theoretical and practical results approve the efficiency of the proposed system in managing irrigation process optimally.