Development of a WSN for Greenhouse Microclimate Distribution Monitoring

Precision greenhouse agriculture requires several measuring points in order to have a better overview of the whole cultivation area. Climate variability within the covered area of a greenhouse can result in a non-uniform plant development and reduced productivity. Therefore, a distributed system, capable of taking multi-point measurements would be able to catch the climatic gradients in order to provide growers with a more detailed depiction of the climate at any time and early warnings of potential threats. Furthermore, the distributed monitoring can offer the appropriate inputs to more sophisticated distributed or plant-based climate control algorithms. The significant price drop in embedded computer and wireless communication chips, as well as the overall maturity of the available, low-power platforms have made the deployment of Wireless Sensor Networks increasingly attractive in modern agricultural facilities. This paper presents a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) deployed for long periods in commercial facilities, equipped with shading screens and cooling pads placed in different directions, namely vertically to the plantation and parallel to it. The evolution of the various climate parameters in both greenhouses and the effect of the climate on the plants and the wireless communications are analyzed and presented.