Energy-Efficient Technique for Monitoring of Agricultural Areas with Terrestrial Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, a monitoring technique based on the wireless sensor network is investigated. The sensor nodes used for monitoring are developed in a simulation environment. Accordingly, the structure and workflow of wireless sensor network nodes are designed. Time-division multiple access (TDMA) protocol has been chosen as the medium access technique to ensure that the designed technique operates in an energy-efficient manner and packet collisions are not experienced. Fading channels, i.e., no interference, Ricean and Rayleigh, are taken into consideration. Energy consumption is decreased with the help of ad-hoc communication of sensor nodes. Throughput performance for different wireless fading channels and energy consumption are evaluated. The simulation results show that the sensor network can quickly collect medium information and transmit data to the processing center in real time. Besides, the proposed technique suggests the usefulness of wireless sensor networks in the terrestrial areas.