Optimization-assisted water supplement mechanism with energy efficiency in IoT based greenhouse

Abstract

Remarkable resource management and energy efficiency improvements can be achieved in greenhouses using innovative technological advancements and modern agricultural methods. Deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) and optimization algorithms in greenhouse farming is highly desirable for real-time monitoring and controlling various parameters with optimal solutions. However, IoT based greenhouses require more energy as compared to traditional farming. This paper proposes an optimal greenhouse water supplement mechanism with efficient energy consumption based on IoT and optimization techniques. The first contribution of this study is to gather the actual water and soil moisture levels from the greenhouse and tank using IoT devices. Secondly, the formulation and deployment of an objective function to compute the optimal water and soil moisture levels for greenhouse and tank based on user-desired settings, the system constraints and actual sensing values. We applied a rule-based expert system to activate water pumps with the required flow rate and operational duration to achieve efficient energy consumption. To prove the effectiveness of the proposed concept, embedded IoT devices and objective function for optimization are deployed as well as, a number of experiments are conducted to provide the optimal water and soil moisture levels in a real greenhouse and water tank environment.