21-07-2014, 02:34 PM
EMBEDDED SYSTEM BASED IMPLEMENTATION OF DRIP IRRIGATION
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ABSTRACT
The green house based modern agriculture industries are the recent requirement in every part of agriculture in India. In this technology, the humidity and temperature of plants are precisely controlled. Due to the variable atmospheric circumstances these conditions sometimes may vary from place to place in large farmhouse, which makes very difficult to maintain the uniformity at all the places in the farmhouse manually. Therefore there is an intense need to develop such Micro controller based embedded system, which could maintain the physical parameters uniform and also could keep the records for analytical studies. We present in this paper, to the best of our knowledge for the first time an auto-control network for agriculture industry, which could give the facilities of maintaining uniform environmental conditions. The second part of the paper will explain the concepts of irrigation systems. The third part will explain the design methodology and their construction. The fourth part will conclude the paper.
INTRODUCTION
The continuous increasing demand of the food requires the rapid improvement in food production technology. In a country like India, where the economy is mainly based on agriculture and the climatic conditions are isotropic, still we are not able to make full use of agricultural resources. The main reason is the lack of rains & scarcity of land reservoir water. The continuous extraction of water from earth is reducing the water level due to which lot of land is coming slowly in the zones of un-irrigated land. Another very important reason of this is due to unplanned use of water due to which a significant amount of water goes waste. In the modern drip irrigation systems, the most significant advantage is that water is supplied near the root zone of the plants drip by drip due to which a large quantity of water is saved. At the present era, the farmers have been using irrigation technique in India through the manual control in which the farmers irrigate the land at the regular intervals. This process sometimes consumes more water or
Concept of Modern Irrigation System
The conventional irrigation methods like overhead sprinklers, flood type feeding systems usually wet the lower leaves and stem of the plants. The entire soil surface is saturated and often stays wet long after irrigation is completed. Such condition promotes infections by leaf mold fungi. The flood type methods consume large amount of water and the area between crop rows remains dry and receives moisture only from incidental rainfall. On the contrary the drip or trickle irrigation is a type of modern irrigation technique that slowly applies small amounts of water to part of plant root zone. Drip irrigation method is invented by Israelis in 1970s. Water is supplied frequently, often daily to maintain favorable soil moisture condition and prevent moisture stress in the plant with proper use of Water resources.
Soil Type and Root Structure
The soil type will dictate how a regular drip of water on one spot will spread. Sandy soil requires closer emitter spacing as water percolates vertically at a fast rate and slower horizontally. With a clay soil water tends to spread horizontally, giving a wide distribution pattern. Emitters can be spaced further apart with clay type soil. A loamy type soil will produce a more even percolation dispersion of water.
Controller Unit
The important parameters to be measured for automation of irrigation system are soil moisture and temperature. The entire field is first divided in to small sections such that each section should contain one moisture sensor and a temperature sensor. RTD like PT100 can be used as a temperature sensor while Tensiometer can be used as the moisture sensor to detect moisture contents of soil. These sensors are buried in the ground at required depth. Once the soil has reached desired moisture level the sensors send a signal to the micro controller to turn off the relays, which control the valves.
DISADVANTAGES
1. This is only applicable for large size farms
2. Equipment is costlier
3. Require frequent maintenance for efficient operation. Have limited life after installation due to the deterioration of the plastic components in a hot, arid climate when exposed to ultraviolet light.
4. Are temporary installations and must be expanded or adjusted to the drip line asPlants grow.
CONCLUSION
The Microcontroller based drip irrigation system proves to be a real time feedback control system which monitors and controls all the activities of drip irrigation system efficientlyThe present proposal is a model to modernize the agriculture industries at a mass scale with optimum expenditure. Using this system, one can save manpower, water to improve production and ultimately profit