Development of an Integrated Feedback and Feed-Forward Algorithm for Smart Irrigation Based on Fuzzy Logic

Abstract

Agriculture is the world’s biggest water consumer, hence the consideration of creating water saving measures. This has led to increase in research on smart irrigation systems over the years. In traditional irrigation the crop is irrigated every day with a certain amount of water base on farmer’s experience without putting the plant’s water need into consideration, this leads to water wastage. Smart irrigation is the solution to this, smart irrigation uses sensors, actuators and internet of things (IoT) to efficiently irrigate in the right place, at the right time and in the right amount. In this work an integrated feedback and feedforward algorithm for smart irrigation based on fuzzy logic was developed. The algorithm employs sensors for feedback and a typical water balance method based on crop evapotranspiration (ETc) which ensures that the soil and plant water inputs must balance the expected output (evapotranspiration) for feedforward. The algorithm employs fuzzy logic controller to efficiently control the percentage of valve opening according to the effect of four input parameters; soil water content (SWC), ETc, air temperature and humidity, which are vital for crop growth making the algorithm efficient in practical scenario. The algorithm was simulated and evaluated using MATLAB and the results compared with existing related work, the result showed that the algorithm is cost effective as it greatly reduces manual labor, the algorithm saves water by 45% and has a higher crop yield as compared to traditional irrigation method.