Monitoring Plant Growth: Using EM Waves With Memristive Echo State Networks

This article introduces an innovative method for non-invasive plant growth monitoring using the transmission characteristics obtained when two antennas: i) Ant1 acts as the receiver antenna and ii) Ant2 as the transmitting antenna located on the plant. The signals received by Ant1 are given to low noise amplifier (LNA) where it gets amplified before neural network-based classification. The receiver antenna is a dual feed circularly polarized antenna (Ant1) while a linearly polarized patch antenna (Ant2) is placed on the plant as the transmitting antenna. Transmission characteristics of the antennas are analyzed throughout with various conditions like the availability of water and other environmental factors. An Echo State Network processes the transmission characteristics to classify plant growth stages. Experiments on various crop species demonstrate the system’s capability to accurately track growth progression and detect stress conditions.