By: Junel Aure, Riego Contawi, Alpha Espinosa,

Ralph Hortillosa, Girlie Ocampo

Algorithm
1. The ESP8266 is set to 802.11b
Soil moisture is an important data type for plant growth and crop production. It is mode
technically the water content of the soil, usually presented in percentage. The 2. The Transmitter node of the
required soil moisture content for planting and environmental monitoring can be sensor network uses a Yagi
provided by the proposed system. Invasive methods can disturb the accuracy of directional antenna and the
soil moisture reading and presents impracticability. With the Soil Reflected Receiver node uses and
Electromagnetic wave method (SREM), soil moisture can be estimated without omnidirectional antenna.
the need of external sensors or invasive equipment. This innovative method 3. Both the transmitter and the
comes from using wireless sensor networks (WSN) communication that uses receiver node are placed on their
transmitter to transmit wireless signal that will be reflected by the soil. The mount at a 1.1m height. See
strength from the reflected signal that is determined by the soil’s reflection figure 3.8 and 3.9 for transmitter
coefficients is used to differentiate the level of soil moisture. To prove the validity and receiver nodes respectively.
of its concept, a total of 3600 measurements are completed in this research, 4. The soil spot to be measured
which are compared with a reference data. A third degree polynomial analysis is is located.
used to generate an equation to estimate soil moisture from received signal 5. To achieve a 45 degrees angle
strength (RSS). Different soil types have different water holding capacity, hence it’s of incidence, the distance of
considered as a great factor when assessing the soil moisture content. both the transmitter and receiver Figure 5 Flowchart of obtaining RSS data
node should be 1.1m from the needed for Correlating Soil Moisture to
Keywords: SREM, RSS, Non-Invasive soil moisture sensing, testing point. RSS
6. The transmitter antenna is angled 45⁰ downward to coincide with the angle
of incidence
7. The transmitter node sends signal to the receiver node
8. Soil moisture level is measure using the SEN0193 capacitive sensor soil
moisture sensor.
9. The receiver node measures the received signal RSSI and stores it in a Secure
Digital Card (SD card) and converts them to a manageable text file.
10. RSSI is measured 200 times and the average RSSI value is determined for its
respective soil moisture content.
11. Repeat these steps until reaching 8 different soil moisture level.
Figure 2 12. Generate an nth order function using the measured RSSI and the soil
Transmitter moisture level as its parameters.
13. Repeat steps 2-12 after setting the ESP8266 to 802.11g mode.
14. Repeat steps 1-13 in the second test location.

Figure 1 Block diagram of correlating Soil Figure 3

Moisture with RSS Receiver
Fig 1 shows how the measured RSS will be correlated with the measured
Soil Moisture and how it will be interpolated using MATLAB to generate
the curve. Table 1 Obtained Empirical Equations for measuring Soil Moisture
The following empirical equations are obtained corresponding to the type of
soil and protocol. By substituting measured RSS values (in dBm) using SREM
method for the x values in the equations in Table 1, the corresponding values of
percent soil moisture can be calculated.

Figure 5 Flowchart of obtaining RSS data needed for Correlating Soil

Moisture to RSS

The transmitter node set up, refer to figure 2, is made up of USB to UART serial
port, ESP8266-07 and has a 10 dB Yagi directional antenna placed on the right side
of the container fixed by screws to secure a 45° angle. The receiver node set up
refer to figure 3, has a 3 dBi omnidirectional antenna, SD card module, ESP8266-
07, and USB to UART serial port. Figure 4 shows the configuration of the Soil
Reflected Electromagnetic (SREM) wave of the sensor system. The transmitter
node transmits EM wave into the ground at an incidence angle of 45 degrees. The
signal is then reflected from the ground to the transmitter node which measures
and stores the RSS level of the signal received in a Secure Digital (SD) card. The
angle of 45⁰ is chosen as the incident angle since it provides the best direct-path
signal attenuation.
Table 2 Expected Deviation Table
Table 2 shows the percent deviation which describes how different the RSSI
values are after testing soils with the same level of percent soil moisture.
The behavior of the signal strength under three different levels of soil moisture
clearly show that the wetter the soil moisture, the higher the signal strength; and
the drier the soil moisture, the lower the signal strength. WLAN protocols are not
much taken into consideration but the type of soil is a great factor when assessing
RSS in determining soil moisture.
March 2018