Empirical Test of Wi-Fi Environment Stability for

Smart Farm Platform

JiHye O Dong-Hee Noh Young-Ho Sohn*
Institute of Industrial Technology, Convergence Research Center Dept. of Computer Engineering,
Yeungnam University for Smart Farm Solution, Yeungnam University
Gyeongsan, Korea Electronics and Telecommunications Gyeongsan, Korea
neoniz85@gmail.com Research Institute ysohn@ynu.ac.kr
Daegu, Korea
ndh1309@etri.re.kr

Abstract— With world population growth, increasing
agricultural production with a declining agricultural workforce
has brought a new spotlight on agricultural ICT. As the
cultivable land in South Korea is relatively small, farmers prefer
the high productivity of greenhouse cultivation. In this case,
labor efficiency can be achieved by developing an integrated
smart platform to collect environmental information and control
the greenhouse facility. This requires the construction of a
network to transfer the sensed information to the control server
and transfer commands from the control server to the control
device. When installing a Wi-Fi communication network inside a
greenhouse, verifying the communication stability is crucial.
Therefore, this study measured the wireless communication
transmission/reception ratio and confirmed that the
communication distance varied according to the crop density.
Keywords— Wireless Sensor Network, Smart Farm, ICT, Wi-
Fi, Agriculture
I. INTRODUCTION
With the explosive population growth, food problems are
constantly emerging all over the world. While South Korea is
not currently facing any serious food shortages, it has a
decreasing grain self-sufficiency rate, since the cultivable land
is only 18 million hectares (2015), and a growing dependency
on imports[1]. Moreover, with the expansion of FTAs (Free
Trade Agreements), Korea's agricultural competitiveness is
continually deteriorating and its overall production has
decreased due to drought. Such natural disasters and climate
changes have also reduced crop production and reduced arable
land all over the world.
development of IoT and M2M, significant efforts have been
made to reduce the power consumption of existing wireless
communication technologies, thereby eliminating this problem
for WSNs.
However, when using wireless communication in a
greenhouse, environmental factors such as obstacles (crops or
equipment) and humidity can cause radio propagation and
communication disturbances. This has led to studies on the
effects of these environmental factors on communication and
new avoidance methods [8, 9]. The recent system
developments based on Open H/W, Arduino and Raspberry Pi
[10, 11] are also expected to help lower the cost of
implementing a smart farm platform.
Accordingly, this paper measured the stable communication
distance according to the characteristics of various obstacles,
such as the crop type, when using Wi-Fi technology to monitor
and control a greenhouse environment. While the advantage of
wireless communication technology is that it is easy to
maintain and can be easily moved when a communication
failure occurs in a sensor node, the reliability is lower than that
of wired communication. Furthermore, when crops grow in a
greenhouse, the size and density of the obstacles unavoidably
change frequently. Therefore, this study aims to demonstrate
that a Wi-Fi wireless network can be operated stably in such an
environment.
II. EXPERIMENTAL ENVIRONMENT
TABLE I. SPECIFICATIONS OF EDISON MODULE

Therefore, every country is making serious efforts to solve Processor CPU RAM FLASH OS
such problems, including the integration of various Intel AtomŒ, 500MHz 1GB 4GB
Yocto
technologies into different aspects of agriculture, such as Intel Quark™ Linux v1.6
production management and traceability[2]. For example,
numerous sensors and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)
technologies have already been applied to semi-automate or A small-scale Wi-Fi wireless network was built and the
automate growth management, thereby helping to improve the transmission rate tests were performed at three locations. The
quality of life of farmers [3-5]. wireless network consisted of one Wi-Fi Access Point (AP),
one client, and one server. As the tests were conducted
WSNs, consisting of sensors and actuators, can be outdoors and some of the equipment required a power supply,
configured to control smart farm facilities using such the client and Wi-Fi AP devices were each connected to a large
communication technologies as ZigBee [6], Bluetooth Low capacity battery. An Intel®Edison board was used as the client
Energy (BLE), Wi-Fi [7], and Z-Wave. Plus, with the rapid device, the specifications for which are included in TABLE I,
plus a laptop (Intel® core i5) was used as the server device.
* Corresponding Author: Young-Ho Sohn (ysohn@ynu.ac.kr)
The Wi-Fi communication was based on the IEEE 802.11.n
single-band 2.4 GHz standard.
The target experimental environment was a greenhouse
100m by 100m. As there was no real greenhouse of the same
size in which crops were growing, the experiments were
conducted in an open space of the same target size. In the case
of the target greenhouse, the longest communication distance
was 100 Č 2 and about 141.42m. Thus, since stable
communication up to 70m represented a suitable environment,
the maximum communication distance was set at 150m, and
the experiment was performed at Yeungnam University,
Gyeongbuk, Korea. Fig. 1. shows a schematic diagram of the
experimental environment.
Fig. 1. Experimental environment of wireless network
Fig. 2. View of test locations
The experimental sites are shown in Fig. 2, where location
1 was a lawn with no obstacles, location 2 was a sidewalk with
a stem-growing area, and location 3 was an area with dense
shrubs. Thus, the density of the obstacles and characteristics of
the plants differed between the 3 locations.
III. EXPERIMENTS
The AP location was set at 0m and the communication tests
were conducted by moving the client device away from the AP
in increments of 10m or 20m up to a distance of 150m, as
shown in Fig. 3. If during the test the wireless network
connection became unstable or disconnected, the test was then
stopped after several checks.
The server program was run in a Ubuntu 14.LTS
environment using the TCP / IP communication protocol.
Whenever the server program stopped, it saved a file log of the
packet data received from the client.
The client program ran on Yocto Linux on an Edison board.
After executing the client program, it automatically scanned the
neighboring AP Service Set Identifier (SSID) and made a
connection if the specified SSID was detected, otherwise it
continued the AP SSID scan. When connected to a network
configured with a pre-specified AP, it sent 100 packets to the
server at 1-second intervals. In this study, two kinds of packet
were transmitted: fixed size and variable size. For the fixed-
size packet transmission test, the Maximum Transmission Unit
(MTU) size was fixed at 1.5KB. For the variable-size packet
transmission test, the packet size was determined using a
random function with a value between 100 and 1500. The
client program also saved a log each time a packet was
transmitted and stored it as a file before exiting the program.
The stability of the wireless communication was checked
by comparing the log data filed by the client with that filed by
the server. The client side saved the transmitted packet data,
while the server side saved the received packet data, which
allowed a comparison to confirm the sending and receiving
rates.
The Acrylic Wi-Fi scanner application was used to check
the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) of the server
device and confirm the RSSI values at each location during the
communication tests. After connecting to the AP, the client
device also displayed the RSSI of the AP. This made it easy to
check any change in the strength of the radio signal for each
device and whether communication was possible.
The tests were conducted in the same manner three times at
each experimental site. As described above, the tests included
the transmission of two types of packet size, fixed packets and
variable packets, and measured the RSSI when moving the
server and client devices up to 150m apart based on 10m
increments from the AP.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The tests were conducted from August 1, 2016 to
September 9, 2016. In the case of rain or other circumstances
that made it impossible to continue, the tests were stopped.
The following graphs (Fig. 4, Fig. 5, & Fig. 6) show the
sum of the RSSI results measured for each test site,
respectively, where the horizontal axis represents the distance
(unit: m) and the vertical axis represents the signal strength
(unit: dBm).
Fig. 3. RSSI measurement results for location 1
 that no further Wi-Fi network signals were received, while
‘Stop’ means the test was stopped due to rain or other
circumstances.

TABLE II. RESULTS OF SENDING AND RECEIVING TESTS AT LOCATION 1

Unit Dist.
50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120
(%) (m)
1st Test 100 100 100 100 Fail 100
Static 2nd Test 100 100 100 100
3rd Test 100 100 99 100 97 89 100 100
1st Test 100 88 93 100 Fail 100
Fig. 4. RSSI measurement results for location 2 Rand. 2nd Test 100 100 Fail 100
3rd Test 99 100 100 100 93 98 100 Fail

As shown in TABLE II for location 1, in the first test, a

communication disturbance occurred at 90m, and
communication became impossible after 100m. In this case,
despite a communication failure at 90m, communication was
still possible until 100m. During the second test, the
measurements were stopped at 80m due to the spraying of
pesticide. Notwithstanding, a communication disturbance was
measured at 70m, meaning that no communication was
expected after 70m. In the third test, communication was
maintained up to120m.
Fig. 5. RSSI measurement results for location 3
In the case of network connection problems, if the
connection failed more than 5 times, the test was stopped at
At location 1 (Fig. 4), the RSSI was measured up to the that distance and continued at the next distance. If the same
maximum distance of 150m, and the signal strength confirmed problem occurred, it was determined that no further
as more than -80dBm, even at 150m. At locations 2 and 3, the communication was impossible and the test was stopped.
signal strength was measured up to 120m and 100m,
respectively. Although the SSID was still searchable at a longer
distance, the measurements were stopped as there was no TABLE III. RESULTS OF SENDING AND RECEIVING TESTS AT LOCATION 2
communication or wireless network connection. Unit Dist.
40 50 60 70 80 90
(%) (m)
In a wireless communication environment, communication 1st Test 98.02 Fail Fail Fail
becomes difficult if the signal strength is less than -80dBm. As Static 2nd Test - 101 - 105.05 - Fail
shown in Fig. 5, the signal strength started to fall below - 3rd Test - 100 97.06 Fail Stop
80dBm at a distance of more than 50m at location 2 (tall grass), 1st Test 220 Fail Fail Fail
resulted in communication failures. Rand. 2nd Test - 117.17 - 109.1 - Fail
3rd Test - 45.83 68.75 Fail Stop
Meanwhile, at location 3 (shrubs), Fig.6 shows the signal
strength rapidly weakened at a distance of more than 10m, and As shown in TABLE III for location 2, in the first test,
the RSSI became -80dbm at a distance of 20m to 40m. Thus, communication failure occurred from 50m to 70m and no
location 3 was the worst communication environment due to network connection was possible after 80m. In this case,
the dense shrubs. communication was confirmed up to 70m. During the third test,
Previous experiments have shown that wireless the measurements were stopped at 80m due to rain, however, it
communication can be stable when the signal strength is above was assumed that communication was impossible at 80m, since
-70 dBm. Therefore, the current study focused on investigating communication problems already occurred at 70m.
the 50m range after the signal strength decreased below - At location 2, packets were rarely received and the client
70dBm, which was after a distance of 50m at location 1, after was unable to connect to the network. In the case of the
40m at location 2 and from 0m at location 3. The results were variable-size packet transmission, the receiving rate for the
as follows. third test was much lower than that for the other tests. The
100 packets were sent from the client to the server at each second test was on August 23, while the third test was on
location, and TABLE II, TABLE III, and TABLE IV show the August 26. Over this three-day interval, heavy rain caused the
reception rates at each location, respectively. The values shown plants to grow 1.5 to 2-fold, thereby changing the experimental
in the cells are the data reception rates received by the server. environment. Thus, the communication environment also
When the value is 100, all the packets were received. When the changed according to the crop growth period.
value is less than 100, this indicates an intermediate loss. When At location 3, the client device was installed in the shrubs.
the value is more than 100, the client side repeatedly As shown in TABLE IV, in the first and third tests, the device
transmitted the same packet several times. Plus, 'Fail' indicates was able to communicate up to 30m, however, in the second
test, communication was only possible up to 10m. Plus, in the considerable influence on the signal intensity. In the case of
second test, the variable-size packet transmission receiving rate the shrub-type obstacles, as the device was surrounded by
was 540% at 10m, and it was impossible to connect to the multiple layers of plants, the communication distance was
network after 10m. significantly reduced like through a wall. Thus, a variety of
factors, such as the growth characteristics of the crops and
TABLE IV. RESULTS OF SENDING AND RECEIVING TESTS AT LOCATION 3 plants, type of crop, and location of the communication
devices, can have an effect on the stability of a wireless sensor
Unit Dist.
(%) (m)
0 10 20 30 40 50 network in a greenhouse.
Static 1st Test - - - 98 Fail Fail Therefore, additional experiments are needed for a more
2nd Test - 98.04 detailed obstacle analysis, including the plant density,
3rd Test 100 94.34 94.34 100 106.061 temperature, and surrounding wireless networks at the test site.
Rand. 1st Test - - - - Fail Fail
2nd Test - 540
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
3rd Test 100 73.87 73.87 98.02
This study was supported by a National Research Council
of Science & Technology (NST) grant from the Korean
While it was originally expected that a signal strength range
Government (MSIP) (No. CRC-15-01-KIST).
of -70dBm~-80dBm would be enough to communicate, the
results of the second test at location 3 showed that
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