17-01-2013, 02:41 PM
ROLE OF ZIGBEE TECHNOLOGY IN AGRICULTURE SECTOR
[attachment=47363]
Abstract
There are number of standards that address low to high data rates for voice, PC LANs, video, etc. However, there hasn’t been a wireless network standard that meets the unique needs of sensors and control devices till now. Sensors and controls don’t need high bandwidth but they do need low latency and very low energy consumption for long battery lives and for large device arrays. ZigBee is a low-cost, low-power, wireless mesh networking standard. The low cost allows the technology to be widely deployed in wireless control and monitoring applications, the low power-usage allows longer life with smaller batteries, and the mesh networking provides high reliability and larger range. The sensing technologies allow the identification of pests in the crops, drought or increased moisture. Having such information at a real-time interval, automated actuation devices can be used to control irrigation, fertilization and pest control in order to offset the adverse conditions. This technology can be applied for wireless applications in agriculture sector.
INTRODUCTION
Precision farming ensures quicker response times to adverse climatic conditions, better quality control of the produce and yet a lower labor cost. Precision farming also makes the use of completely automated machinery, a possibility. This form of highly automated agriculture requires intensive sensing of climatic conditions at the ground level and rapid communication of the raw data to a central repository. At the central server, with the availability of computational power, decision making and control of farm equipment is done. The Precision farming system has the following parts:
• Sensing agricultural parameters
• Identification of sensing location and data gathering
• Transferring data from crop field to control station for decision making
• Actuation and Control decision based on sensed data
Agricultural Sensors, positioning systems for detecting location of sensors, actuators like sprinklers, foggers, valve-controlled irrigation system, etc. are already available in market. However, very limited work has been done so far on the technologies to be used to transfer sensor data wirelessly from crop field to the remote server
ZigBee
The ZigBee standard is built on top of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. ZigBee is an established set of specifications for wireless personal area networking (WPAN), i.e. digital radio connections between computers and related devices. ZigBee provides specifications for devices that have low data rates, consume very low power and are thus characterized by long battery life. The IEEE 802.15.4 standard defines the physical and MAC (Medium Access Control) layers. The physical layer supports three frequency bands with different gross data rates: 2.450 MHz (250 kbs-1), 915 MHz (40 kbs-1) and 868 MHz (20 kbs-1). It also supports functionalities for channel selection, link quality estimation, energy measurement and clear channel assessment. ZigBee standardizes both the network and the application layer. The network layer is in charge of organizing and providing routing over a multi-hop network,
CONCLUSION
ZigBee is a new technology now being deployed for wireless sensor networks. A sensor network is an infrastructure comprised of sensing, computing and communications elements that allows the administrator to instrument, observe and react to events and phenomena in a specified environment. This technology seems to be the most suitable wireless technology for agriculture applications.
[attachment=47363]
Abstract
There are number of standards that address low to high data rates for voice, PC LANs, video, etc. However, there hasn’t been a wireless network standard that meets the unique needs of sensors and control devices till now. Sensors and controls don’t need high bandwidth but they do need low latency and very low energy consumption for long battery lives and for large device arrays. ZigBee is a low-cost, low-power, wireless mesh networking standard. The low cost allows the technology to be widely deployed in wireless control and monitoring applications, the low power-usage allows longer life with smaller batteries, and the mesh networking provides high reliability and larger range. The sensing technologies allow the identification of pests in the crops, drought or increased moisture. Having such information at a real-time interval, automated actuation devices can be used to control irrigation, fertilization and pest control in order to offset the adverse conditions. This technology can be applied for wireless applications in agriculture sector.
INTRODUCTION
Precision farming ensures quicker response times to adverse climatic conditions, better quality control of the produce and yet a lower labor cost. Precision farming also makes the use of completely automated machinery, a possibility. This form of highly automated agriculture requires intensive sensing of climatic conditions at the ground level and rapid communication of the raw data to a central repository. At the central server, with the availability of computational power, decision making and control of farm equipment is done. The Precision farming system has the following parts:
• Sensing agricultural parameters
• Identification of sensing location and data gathering
• Transferring data from crop field to control station for decision making
• Actuation and Control decision based on sensed data
Agricultural Sensors, positioning systems for detecting location of sensors, actuators like sprinklers, foggers, valve-controlled irrigation system, etc. are already available in market. However, very limited work has been done so far on the technologies to be used to transfer sensor data wirelessly from crop field to the remote server
ZigBee
The ZigBee standard is built on top of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. ZigBee is an established set of specifications for wireless personal area networking (WPAN), i.e. digital radio connections between computers and related devices. ZigBee provides specifications for devices that have low data rates, consume very low power and are thus characterized by long battery life. The IEEE 802.15.4 standard defines the physical and MAC (Medium Access Control) layers. The physical layer supports three frequency bands with different gross data rates: 2.450 MHz (250 kbs-1), 915 MHz (40 kbs-1) and 868 MHz (20 kbs-1). It also supports functionalities for channel selection, link quality estimation, energy measurement and clear channel assessment. ZigBee standardizes both the network and the application layer. The network layer is in charge of organizing and providing routing over a multi-hop network,
CONCLUSION
ZigBee is a new technology now being deployed for wireless sensor networks. A sensor network is an infrastructure comprised of sensing, computing and communications elements that allows the administrator to instrument, observe and react to events and phenomena in a specified environment. This technology seems to be the most suitable wireless technology for agriculture applications.