Solar-Powered Smart Irrigation System Using IoT Soil Moisture Sensing
Abstract & Keywords
Inefficient irrigation remains a major cause of water wastage and reduced crop yield in small and medium-sized farms across semi-arid regions. This paper presents a low-cost, solar-powered smart irrigation system that uses distributed IoT soil moisture sensors and a rule-based control algorithm to automate water delivery. The system consists of capacitive soil moisture sensors, a solar-charged battery unit, an ESP32 microcontroller, and a mobile dashboard for remote monitoring. Soil moisture readings are transmitted every ten minutes over Wi-Fi to a cloud database, and irrigation valves are triggered automatically when moisture falls below a crop-specific threshold. The system was deployed across three test plots of tomato, onion, and sugarcane over a 45-day growing period and compared against a manually irrigated control plot. Results show an average water savings of 34.6% and a yield improvement of 11.2% relative to the control plot, with sensor battery life exceeding 60 days on a single solar charge cycle. These results indicate that low-cost IoT-based irrigation automation is a practical and scalable solution for water-constrained farming regions, particularly where grid electricity is unreliable.
Author Affiliations
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