Smart sensors based monitoring system for agriculture using field programmable gate array

Monitoring of environmental factors is significant over the last few decades. In particular, monitoring agricultural environments for various factors such as temperature, moisture, humidity along with other factors can be of more significance. A traditional approach to measure these factors in an agricultural environment meant individuals manually taking measurements and checking them at various times. To avoid this, it is necessary to document the detail changes in environmental parameters by the use of technologies helping for both Le. to improve the yield as well as to reduce the man efforts. The objective of this project was to develop a smart sensor based monitoring system for agricultural environment using field programmable gate array (FPGA) which comprised of wireless protocol, different types of sensors, microcontroller, serial protocol and the field programmable gate array with display element. Different types of sensors such as temperature, soil moisture and relative humidity senses the data in agricultural environment and provide it to microcontroller, interfaced with the wireless bluetooth module. A pair of transmitter and receiver wireless module helps in transmitting and receiving the data which is then fed to FPGA using a serial communication protocol UART. Data are displayed on LCD unit to monitor the system. Relays are interfaced with FPGA acting as a controlling element according to conditions provided to it.

I. Introduction

In most country's economy, agriculture has been playing a vital role. Agriculture is the basis of livelihood for the population through the production of food and important raw materials. Moreover, agriculture continues to play an important role in providing large scale employment to people. Agricultural growth is considered necessary for development and for a country's transformation from a traditional to a modern economy and especially about India being well known for agricultural work. Agriculture in India is an essential part and India is considered as the land of farming. More than half of the workforce is related to the agriculture and its allied fields. Nowadays almost everything in a world can be controlled and operated automatically, but there are still a few important sectors in our country where automation has not been adopted or not been put to a full-fledged use, perhaps because of several reasons one such reason is cost and the field is agriculture. Almost all the farmers are still depending on the traditional orthodox way of farming. It is being observe that the yield of crops, fruits have not being increasing. Even in some parts it is declining. Automation has been achieved, humans are replaced by machines. Directly speaking, science and technology has proved its importance in those fields. Therefore there is need to grab the fruitfulness of science and technology in the field for higher yield and growth in agriculture. The use of science and technology in the field of agriculture not only reduces the man efforts but also helps in increasing the yield of crops.