Smart agri-soil monitoring and maintenance through excess water based on ICT and fuzzy inference system

Abstract

In Agriculture, water plays a big role, like watering the vegetation and helps the micronutrients to be mixed. The farmlands watering may be drenched from different sources, which include rainfalls, fountains, wells and rivers. The water level monitoring is an essential task in farmlands, as each plant requires its own moderate water level. The deficit of water in a given plant may affect its growth; even the excess of water may affect the life of plant. The development of plant may be affected by the moisture stress. As the water becomes excess at a time of heavy rainfall, the micronutrients become unstable and it affects the life of vegetation. There are different methods, which are currently applied to manage water in farmland, like making manholes in fields, directing water in different rivers, building tanks to capture water from farmlands and using manpower to fetch water from farmlands. These techniques are traditionally used. Today, as technology advances every single step in agriculture, this research aims to deploy an intelligent system that is able to monitor soil temperature and humidity, soil moisture and water level. The system is able to fetch excess water from farmland and let the plant to remain with the required water for its growth. In this research, the NYABARONGO Valley is taken as consideration and divided into sections; each section has its corresponding water irrigation pump, water Drainage pump and mega tank. Each section is enabled to sense, actuate and communicate with the cloud. Sugarcane vegetation is also taken as a sample to be monitored because it occupies a big place in Nyabarongo valley. With the help of sensory prototype results, Matlab fuzzy logic based simulations, and the Matlab Simulink experimental results, the proposed research proves its ability of delivering soil maintenance and minimization of negative effects of excess water.