Design, implementation, and testing of an M2M-based remote agroecological monitoring system for oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel)

Abstract

Field monitoring is always an important issue in modern agricultural management and therefore an efficient, automatic system for environmental data collection is needed. An ideal system for this purpose should be able to record long-term and up-to-the-minute environmental fluctuations. In this paper, we report a remote pest monitoring system which was newly designed with large-scale, long-distance, long-term, and real-time agricultural information collection capabilities. The proposed system was built upon wireless sensor network (WSN). The system consists of three major components: a network of wireless automatic counting traps (WACTs), a remote monitoring platform (RMP), and a host control platform (HCP). WACTs transmit environmental data to RMP through a WSN. The RMP packages all data sent by WACTs into an SMS message, and delivers this message to HCP by using a Global System of Mobile Communication (GSM) module. Users can search all historical sensing data from HCP and a website. The proposed system has been tested in the field since August 2008, and the data transmitted from the monitored field has demonstrated that the system is capable of monitoring environmental parameters and population dynamics of the Oriental fruit fly in real-time. The data collected by the proposed system offers useful information to researchers to analyze the relationship between the population dynamics of the fruit fly and the environmental parameters. Based on the analysis, we believe that a better operation decision can be made in pest monitoring and management. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.