Soil Sensors and their Wireless Underground Network for Precision Farming and Environmental Management

本项目的目标是：（1）用于监测土壤水分和硝酸盐等土壤特性的原位土壤传感器;（2）用于自主采集时空变化的土壤特性的地下无线传感器网络;（3）用于农业生产系统建模和分析的基于分布式监测的信息管理和决策技术。（1）为研究人员开发一个网络框架，以便更好地了解大面积土壤和环境的特性;（2）建立地下传感器和通信网络;（3）开发农业施肥管理工具，在满足作物需求的同时尽量减少对环境的影响。（1）拟议的计划是朝着精确控制化肥施用迈出的一步，这将有助于减少化肥流入流域，并将对环境的影响降到最低;（2）所提出的地下传感器网络将在任何需要远程地下分布式传感的应用中找到其用途，（人、火等），或隐蔽性（例如，边境巡逻队）;（3）地下网络基础设施可以被其他研究团体使用，例如（遥感），以校准/验证他们自己的设备/算法;学生将在农业科学、土壤传感、地下无线网络和基于作物/水文流/碳循环模型的决策等跨学科领域接受培训。该提案的变革性组成部分包括：（1）将信息和网络系统技术引入农业领域，以便对土壤特性进行精确、频繁和高分辨率的测量，并对农业投入进行测量驱动的控制;（2）开发能够进行地下通信、节能操作、定位和故障恢复的无线传感器网络基础设施;（3）开发用于测量土壤特性（如水分和养分）的精确和可现场部署的传感器。

The objectives of this program are to develop: (1) In-situ soil sensors for monitoring soil properties such as soil moisture and nitrates; (2) Underground wireless sensor network for autonomously gathering the spatio-temporally varying soil properties; (3) Information management and decision-making technology based on distributed monitoring for modeling and analysis of agricultural production systems.The intellectual merits are: (1) Development of a network based framework for researchers to better understand properties of soils and the environment over a large area; (2) Establishment of an underground sensor and communication network; (3) Development of tools for fertilization management in farming for minimizing their environmental impact while meeting crop demands.The broader impacts are: (1) The proposed program is a step toward precisely controlling fertilizer application that will help reduce their run-offs to the watersheds and minimizing the environmental impact; (2) The proposed underground sensor network will find its use in any application requiring remote underground distributed-sensing, safety against surface activities (human, fire, etc.), or covertness (e.g., border patrol); (3) The underground network infrastructure can be used by other research community such as(remote-sensing) to calibrate/validate their own equipment/algorithms; (4) Three Ph.D. students will be trained in an interdisciplinary area of agriculture sciences, soil sensing, underground wireless networking, and decision-making based on crop/hydrologic-flow/carbon-cycle models.The transformative components of the proposal are: (1) Introduction of information and cybersystem technologies to the field of agriculture for precise, frequent, and high-resolution measurement of soil properties, and measurement-driven control of agriculture inputs; (2) Development of a wireless sensor network infrastructure capable of underground communication, energy-efficient operation, localization, and resiliency to failures; (3) Development of accurate and field-deployable sensors for measuring soil properties such as moisture and nutrient.