Radio Wave Attenuation Measurement System Based on RSSI for Precision Agriculture: Application to Tomato Greenhouses

Abstract

Precision agriculture and smart farming are concepts that are acquiring an important boom due to their relationship with the Internet of Things (IoT), especially in the search for new mechanisms and procedures that allow for sustainable and efficient agriculture to meet future demand from an increasing population. Both concepts require the deployment of sensor networks that monitor agricultural variables for the integration of spatial and temporal agricultural data. This paper presents a system that has been developed to measure the attenuation of radio waves in the 2.4 GHz free band (ISM- Industrial, Scientific and Medical) when propagating inside a tomato greenhouse based on the received signal strength indicator (RSSI), and a procedure for using the system to measure RSSI at different distances and heights. The system is based on Zolertia Re-Mote nodes with the Contiki operating system and a Raspberry Pi to record the data obtained. The receiver node records the RSSI at different locations in the greenhouse with the transmitter node and at different heights. In addition, a study of the radio wave attenuation was measured in a tomato greenhouse, and we publish the corresponding obtained dataset in order to share with the research community.