Edge Computing Multimodal Instrumentation For Measurement And Modelling of Soil Hydraulic Conductivity

Current trends in distributed computing facilitate data processing near the end user through Cloud-Fog-Edge architectures. Agricultural instrumentation applications can greatly benefit from edge computing signal processing, to provide detailed information about soil hydraulic conductivity towards improving irrigation planning and scheduling. A multimodal instrumentation scheme is constructed with a combination of field infiltrometer and wetting front detection to measure soil saturated hydraulic conductivity. Measurements were performed on a test lysimeter using sandy loam soil. The results indicate that the combined instrumentation can provide detailed information of the soil hydraulic conductivity which has important implications for irrigation scheduling.