The proposal is to develop a BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) mesh system for network of sensors which monitors various parts of agricultural lands with FPGA (DE10 nano) being the processing unit. The land under monitoring is split into a grid of smaller areas. Each of these areas have a remote Bluetooth node with a sensor system in it. This sensor system monitors several factors like moisture in the soil, temperature, pH level which are essential for agriculture. The nodes which are connected in a Bluetooth mesh sends the sensor data to the master (Bluetooth) which is connected to FPGA (DE10 nano) and ESP8266 Gateway. With the data from the nodes, particular areas can be monitored for proper field conditions. All these data are then processed in the FPGA and transmitted to a web-based platform through IoT where the farmer can see the data.

Project Proposal

1. High-level project introduction and performance expectation

The proposal is to develop a BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) mesh system for network of sensors which monitors various parts of agricultural lands with FPGA (DE10 nano) being the processing unit. The land under monitoring is split into a grid of smaller areas. Each of these areas have a remote Bluetooth node with a sensor system in it. This sensor system monitors several factors like moisture in the soil, temperature, pH level which are essential for agriculture. The nodes which are connected in a Bluetooth mesh sends the sensor data to the master (Bluetooth) which is connected to FPGA (DE10 nano) and ESP8266 Gateway. With the data from the nodes, particular areas can be monitored for proper field conditions. All these data are then processed in the FPGA and transmitted to a web-based platform through IoT where the farmer can see the data. 

2. Block Diagram

3. Expected sustainability results, projected resource savings

Expected sustainability: 

1. Less or no human interference needed. 
2. Increased crop yield by automatically monitoring crop growth. 
3. Prevention of crop loss by predicting weather and natural calamities in prior. 
4. Farmer will be informed of the field’s condition from anywhere, so remote monitoring is possible. 
5. As far as resource saving is concerned, proper equipment can be allotted to a particular field just on time of need as predicted by our system. 
6. Based on the size of land, only the number of nodes can be varied which will be accessed by a single FPGA rather than having multiple FPGA boards and thus minimizing the technical investment as well. 

Outcomes: 

• This system basically enables farmers to understand about the condition of various parts of their land with respect to the changing climatic conditions and notifies them to act accordingly in order to have a better crop management in their lands.
• Also with the implementation of this system in the fields, lesser human intervention is needed and conditions can be accessed faster than human means.
• Several major issues faced in agriculture such as crop yield reduction; loss of crops due to weather can be solved. 

4. Design Introduction

Use of DE-10 nano board and BLE Mesh (Sensor node): 

The data of the conditions in the respective block of land is obtained from the nodes to the BLE master. This collected raw data is then given to the DE-10 nano via UART. The environmental parameters are sequentially saved in the FPGA. Each of this data is checked for the respective preset ranges by the DE-10. The onboard humidity and temperature sensor are used to get real time ambient levels which are then used to check the values from others nodes. The DE-10 is connected to the internet via node MCU. All the acquired raw sensor values will be converted to standard physical values as per SI unit system and also calibrated accordingly. After analyzing the data from all the nodes, the final information is sent to a cloud (Thinkspeak) via internet, from where it’ll be fed to a web-based GUI where the farmer can see. 

5. Functional description and implementation

6. Performance metrics, performance to expectation

7. Sustainability results, resource savings achieved

8. Conclusion