WSN with Aerial Mobile Node

Presentation

Since several years, sensor networks are increasing their applications in multiple domains. One of them is agriculture, for their supervision to improving crops, and to monitor to avoid disaster. In a field, the sensors have to communicate with no cables and their autonomy should be large to last throughout the season, at least, until harvest. In order to save energy, the communication range is limited. If the field has several kilometres large, the low power communication is not feasible due to the long distance among nodes. To collect the data acquired by the nodes scattered throughout the field, a mobile node or mule has been developed, which travel through the field in its search. In order that the mobile node can travel long distances and completed within a short period of time, an aerial vehicle has been designed.

The aerial vehicle carries the mobile node or mule and it brings it near enough to enter within the range of each ground node. The mobile node retrieves the data stored in the ground node. The aerial vehicle can be used to acquire more information than that obtained by the nodes, its elevated position allows observing the field with a perspective that is useful for detecting changes in crops, such as pests, plagues, or important changes in soil moisture, drought or floods. The developed sensor network with mobile node has been designed with the objective of low cost in mind.