Smart Bluetooth Stakes: Deployment of Soil Moisture Sensors with Rotating High-Gain Antenna Receiver on Center Pivot Irrigation Boom in a Commercial Wheat Field

Realization of the goals of precision agriculture is dependent on prescribing irrigation strategies matched to spatiotemporal variations in soil moisture on commercial farms. However, the scale at which these variations occur is not well understood. A high-spatial-density network of sensors with the ability to measure and report data over the course of a growing season is needed. In this work, design of the low-profile Smart Bluetooth Stake spatiotemporal soil moisture mapping system is presented. Smart stakes use Bluetooth Low Energy to communicate 64 MHz soil moisture impedance measurements from ground level to a receiver mounted on the center-pivot irrigation boom and equipped with a rotating high-gain parabolic antenna. Smart stakes can remain in the ground throughout the entire growing season without disrupting farm operations. A system of 86 sensors was deployed on a 50-hectare commercial field near Elberta, Utah, during the final growth stage of a crop of winter wheat. Different receiver antenna configurations were tested over the course of several weeks which included two full irrigation cycles. In the high-gain antenna configuration, data was successfully collected from 75 sensors, with successful packet transmission at ranges of approximately 600 m. Enough data was collected to construct a spatiotemporal moisture map of the field over the course of an irrigation cycle. Smart Bluetooth Stakes constitute an important advance in the spatial density achievable with direct sensors for precision agriculture.