Smart control of environmental parameters for rural development using wearable computing

Abstract

In this era of modernization, lots of systems have been introduced by which the human effort has been limited to a certain level. In this work a data acquisition system has been developed for agricultural environment monitoring, which will measure the certain parameters like temperature, humidity, water level and the level of gases present in atmosphere. The data is collected from sensor nodes which are deployed in the field and transmitted to the control room node using ZigBee network and then retransmit the desired data to handheld device of concerned person. The LCD is used to display the sensor parameters. The RF modem is used to transmit the values to the control room node using mesh network topology. The control room node contains ZigBee transceiver module to receive the information. The ZigBee network is working at 9600 baud rate and 2.4GHz frequency in ISM band. The ZigBee nodes are capable to transmit the information up to 100meteres and for long distance communication; multi- hopping can be used. Since the sensors is to be deployed in the field to cover all area without any dark zone, the sensors position need to be placed in a way to ensures high quality of service. This is achieved by placing optimal number of sensors covering maximum area in the network without any communication failure. In order to achieve the same network optimization algorithm is used for efficient routing. There are various optimization algorithms available. However, after comparative study of algorithms particle swarm optimization algorithm is selected and used to find the optimal positions of the sensors because of better scalability. The proposed work is demonstrated by implementation of hardware. Data from various field sensor nodes is collected by central server. The handheld device is designed to display all required information through the server node, which is connected to network by means of zigbee. Wireless sensor networks are concluded as helpful to a great extent to reduce the physical effort involved in performing the strenuous agricultural practices. The nodes are economical and can be installed in harsh environmental conditions. Circuit simulation is done before actual hardware implementation of the system. Programming for microcontroller is done with the help of AVR studio4 using embedded ‘C’. USB to serial programmer is being used to program the system. The major outcome of the research is an innovative method, an apparatus and an algorithm for wireless sensor network for development of a system for smart control of environment parameters for rural development particularly useful for farmers. The innovation in the present work is the development of handheld device for farmers, optimized algorithm for individual sensors nodes and optimization of placement of the nodes.