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Published in IET Communications
Received on 5th November 2013
Revised on 16th December 2013
Accepted on 7th January 2014
doi: 10.1049/iet-com.2013.0995

ISSN 1751-8628

Agricultural monitoring system based on ant colony

algorithm with centre data aggregation
Wen-Tsai Sung1, Hung-Yuan Chung2, Kuo-Yi Chang1
1
Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chin-Yi University of Technology, No.57, Sec. 2, Zhongshan Rd., Taiping
Dist., Taichung 41170, Taiwan
2
Department of Electrical Engineering, National Central University, Taiwan
E-mail: songchen@ncut.edu.tw

Abstract: This paper proposed environmental parameters are collected by use of outdoor ZigBee based weather stations as a
prerequisite for the optimisation of plant growth. In most cases, all the sensors required are integrated into a weather station,
due to which merely a single monitoring node is employed following data aggregation. An energy efficient center data
aggregation algorithm, where an ant colony algorithm is applied to the construction of a level gradient field, is presented as
an effective way to extend the life cycles of sensor nodes. A weather station and a ZigBee module both are portable and easy
to install battery operated devices. Furthermore, a remote web-based human machine interface (HMI) is developed by
InduSof on a server, and has an access to a database. This proposed algorithm is confirmed by computer simulations as an
effective approach to remarkably extend the life cycles of sensor nodes. This work can be applied not merely to traditional
outdoor large scale farming, but also to small scale indoor plantation, e.g. in a green house, a plant factory, etc., and applied
to the field of conservation ecology.

1 Introduction battery operated ZigBee modules are employed in this work

As a direct impact of global climate change, oil price hikes
and financial speculation, food shortage has become one of
today’s most critical issues that humans need to face
seriously. Since the conventional farming is highly weather
dependent, the idea of a plant factory is firstly
conceptualised by Japanese as a way to reduce the weather
impact and as an approach to high efficiency agriculture for
year-round production in a well monitored environment.
According to the way it operates, an automated plant
factory can be categorised as the types of sun optic light
source, human made light source and hybrid light source.
This study is devoted to the realisation of an environmental
monitoring system.
The construction of a level gradient field is seen as a key
issue in a centre data aggregation algorithm employed for a
wireless sensor network operation. The use of flood routing
approach leads to tremendous energy consumption. In a bid
to extend the life cycles of sensors, this paper presents an
energy efficient centre data aggregation algorithm where an
ant colony algorithm is applied to the construction of the
level gradient field. A portable, waterproof and battery
powered weather station is adopted for weather data
collection, and can be operated together with any type of
WatchDog weather monitoring sensors. In this manner, the
number of serial link required for data transfer with a
unified data format is reduced. Low power, low cost and
for wireless data transmission. The environmental
parameters of interest are monitored in real time, and are
entered into a database for scientific purpose.
Developed by InduSoft Web Studio, an award winning
software development tool, a human–machine interface
(HMI) is built on the server, and is granted an access to any
kind of SQL databases, namely MS, SQL, MYSQL,
Sybase, Oracle, MS Access and ERP/MES system
including SAP, and is supported on Windows Embedded
CE platform. The data presentation in such databases can
be made either in tabular or in graphic form for analysis
purpose. In addition, more than 240 communication drivers
are supported to facilitate data transmission by a web-based
HMI for remote operation.
2 Literature review
A worldwide spread of food crisis had been seen, since the
second half of 2007. In the year 2008, the food storage falls
dramatically, leading to price hikes. Taking USA as an
instance, two of largest grocery retailers, Walmart and
Costco, assigned a food quota on certain types of rice to
each customer. Conventionally, food shortage is attributed
to population increase, reduced farm area and natural
disasters. Yet, this is not true anymore, for the reason that
oil price hikes are tied directly to food price rise. As

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indicated in a UN report, it is profitable to make an investment
into biomass fuel business when the oil price per barrel goes
beyond US$60-70. As of 30 June 2008, the price reaches US
$143.67, urging more investment in bio energy than ever
before. A multitude of food is treated as raw materials used
to produce biomass fuels in such developed countries as
USA. As stated in a global vision report released by the
International Monetary Fund, biomass fuels merely account
for 1.5% of global total liquid fuel supply, but it consumes
as much as 50% of total world food supply between years
2006 and 2007. Thus, alternative use of food brings about
global food shortage [1].
Owing to the population increase as well as reduced farm
area, a systematic and logic way must be found to make good
use as much the available agricultural resources as possible in
an effort to increase crop yields. For instance, the utilisation
of chemical fertilizers employed in traditional farming is
merely 30% or so, while it doubled, namely between 60 and
70%, in developed countries, such as the United States of
America. This is simply because of fact that agriculture is
indeed treated as a scientific discipline in developed
countries, not merely by empirical means. Accordingly,
adverse impacts can be reduced or even removed completely
in advance to reach the high yield target, such as the
improvement of soil treatment, metabolic improvement of
soil water and nutrient, pest disasters and natural disasters,
for example, cold disaster, drought, flood and so on [2].
Water scarcity is a problem commonly seen in agriculture.
In most cases, crops are more or less affected by soil water. A
great number of reports conclude that a low or even medium,
level of water deficit increase the quantity as well as the
quality of farm produce otherwise. As a measure of water
shortage, weather indices involve temperature, humidity,
irradiance, rainfall, wind speed (wind power) and so on, all
demonstrating influence on plant transpiration [3].
Not the entire spectral components of sunlight take part in
the photosynthesis process. Chlorophyll a and b are found to
have respective absorption peaks between 640 and 660 nm
and between 430 and 450 nm. Red light serves as an
energy source for photosynthesis to foster the stem growth
of plants, while a great amount of carbon dioxide are
captured into plant cells to speed up photosynthesis and the
growth rate of plant leaves because of blue light absorption.
In short, a well-chosen R/B ratio is seen as required
growing healthy plants. Plant internode length and plant
height are key issues in gardening business. The light flux
ratio of red at 660 nm to far infrared (FR) at 730 nm, that
is, the R/FR ratio, dominates the plant height adjustment.
As a significant parameter, the R/FR ratio demonstrates
respective influences on axillary bud differentiation,
chlorophyll, pore index, leaf area etc. There is no way that
the R/B and R/FR ratios can be tuned in a traditional light
source employed in a green house. In addition, a traditional
light source radiates much of the wattage it consumed as
heat directly into the environment, leading to an increase in
the air conditioning running cost. Over recent years, LEDs
have been employed worldwide as greenhouse light
sources, because of the advantage of small volume, light
weight, long lifetime, low power, high efficiency, low lose
beauty and so on. As a cold light source, it is applicable to
short range lighting and is designed as a tunable device for
R/B and R/FR ratios for the sake of plant growth [4].
On the subject of data aggregation, a data aggregation tree
is essentially a minimum Steiner tree problem between a
source node and the sink, or a minimum spanning tree
problem, as pointed out in [5]. The routing of a minimum
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Steiner tree is an NP problem [6]. So far, there exist a great
number of data aggregation strategies, among which three
suboptimal algorithms, that is, CNS (centre at nearest
source), SPT (shortest paths tree) and GIT (greedy
incremental tree), are presented in [7]. At a low level of
data aggregation, GIT > SPT > CNS in terms of energy
efficiency, whereas GIT > SPT at a high level of data
aggregation. Not as in a directed diffusion (DD) algorithm
[8] with a random aggregation mechanism, polynomial
constructed aggregation tree in a GIT algorithm
demonstrates superior energy efficiency relative to a DD
algorithm. Yet, the price paid by GIT is a long delay during
data aggregation process in the event of incomplete
aggregation. Accordingly, a way must be found to develop
an energy efficient algorithm such that the life cycles of
sensors can be extended as requested. A centre data
aggregation algorithm, as suggested in [9], is presented
considering a tradeoff between the computational
complexity and efficiency. It is presented as four steps, that
is, the construction of a level gradient field, the centring of
the region of interest, a data aggregation tree construction
and reporting information. A level gradient field refers to an
outward diffusion gradient by flood routing with the sink as
the centre. The network performance is inevitably degraded
on account of periodicity of a source node and broadcast
datagram. This study presents an improved version of centre
data aggregation algorithm where a level gradient field is
constructed through an ant colony approach, rather than a
flood routing technique. In the event, this proposed
algorithm is validated by computer simulations as an
approach to superior energy efficiency.
Data fusion technology was introduced into wireless sensor
networks to effectively improve data collection efficiency,
communication bandwidth, save energy resources and
extend the network life cycle. The design and application of
wireless sensor networks have been greatly important to the
development of modern computer networks. The ant colony
algorithm was applied successfully applied to solve
optimisation problems in agriculture monitoring. Fusion
centres in the ant colony optimisation algorithm can reduce
the search space size, thereby speeding up convergence
[10]. Different types of ant labour divisions are explored in
the network topology. The build path tree establishes an
alternative path table set, forming the node residual energy
information into information elements. Each sensor node
achieves balanced energy consumption, thereby prolonging
the network lifetime. Improving data collection accuracy
and efficiency through data fusion technology is an
effective way to solve resource constraints, remove
redundant information, reduce the amount of data
transmission to achieve energy savings and prolong the
network lifetime [11].
3 System framework
As sketched in Fig. 1a, this proposal comprises a number of
weather stations as ambience data aggregation units which are
all linked to an indoor server via ZigBee technology. The
environment parameters collected are then transmitted to the
server, displayed on a HMI and then saved in a data base.
3.1 Weather stations
Powered by four AA-size batteries, a waterproof weather
station performs a 1 year long term operation outdoor.
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Fig. 1 Proposal comprises a number of weather stations
a Device link in the presented weather monitoring system
b Weather station photo and enlargements of respective accessories
Furthermore, it is equipped with up to nine ports for data
transfer from any type of WatchDog weather monitoring
sensors. The data collected can be stored in built-in
registers and are made accessible to users at any time. A
weather station can be directly operated by users through an
interface, for example, an LCD touch screen monitor or a
keyboard, or can be remotely controlled by a PC through an
auxiliary port. Presented in Fig. 1b are a photo of a weather
station and enlarged images of respective accessories.
3.2 Solar radiation sensor
Sunlight, air and water, are essential during the
photosynthesis process for energy generation. Yet,
excessive sun exposure does not necessarily make
contribution to energy generation. Sunlight is in essence a
form of heat energy. Once redundant heat is taken by
plants, more moisture must be evaporated via root and the
leaves as a way of cooling themselves down. However, the
price paid is the loss in the photosynthesis efficiency, since
it takes energy to perform the entire cooling process.
Sunlight is known as a form of electromagnetic wave, and
can be categorised into visible and invisible light according to
human eye’s reaction to light. In modern optics, light
radiation is modelled as a flow of photons. Measured in
units of Joules, the energy carried by each photon is
determined once a light surface and the number of photons
passing through such surface over a specified period of time
are given.
Radiation flux is defined as the energy flow per unit surface
and per unit time, and radiation intensity is defined as the
radiation power per solid angle measured in steradians. For
instance, a steradian is defined as the solid angle subtended
at the centre of a unit sphere by a unit area on its surface [12].
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3.3 Temperature/humidity sensor module
As one of the key factors dominating plant growth,
temperature not merely demonstrates effects on the
metabolism in the interior of plants, for example,
photosynthesis, breathing and transpiration, but also
demonstrates effects on the delivery and absorption of
moisture and nutrients in comparison, humidity affect
moisture absorbing, transpiration, stomatal behaviour. A
high level of humidity slows down the process of
transpiration, while a low level gives rise to an excessive air
pressure drop across internal air chamber and ambience, and
provides insufficient moisture to leaves. In this context,
leaves die in the end. Besides, the breathing pores of leaves
are closed as a consequence of humidity conditions below
or beyond recommended range. In that event, carbon
dioxide cannot reach leaf cells for participation in the
intended photosynthesis. In addition, humidity level beyond
recommend range is found to speed up the fungus growth,
while below is to foster the development of pests.
There are two types of temperature sensors, namely the
contact and non-contact types, according to the operation
mechanisms thereof. In terms of sensor materials as well as
operation mechanism, they can be further categorised into
thermocouples and thermistor. As a passive sensor, the former
are the most popular in temperature measurement because of
the advantage of low cost, wide measurement range and a
long lifetime. It is composed of a pair of metallic thin wires
made of metals A and B. The moment one end of a
thermocouple is heated, there appears to be a potential drop
across the opposite end. In simple terms, thermocouples are
one of the simplest, the most commonly seen but low
precision temperature sensors. For this sake, they are not
applicable to high precision temperature measurement and
related applications. An alternative but high precision way for
temperature detection is the use of DC powered, small size
and thermistors with a fast response time. A higher priced
thermistor, as opposed to a thermocouple, does not provide a
wide measurement range as desired. A typical thermistor is
measured to have an internal resistance of 5 kΩ and a
sensitivity of 200 Ω/°C at 25°C, and a 10 Ω lead wire
resistance accounts for merely 0.05°C error. In short, it is an
electronic device applicable to high precision temperature
detection circuitry with a fast response time. The small size
feature does not give rise to a thermal load, while a
disadvantage gained is that the heat generated by the sensor
itself may account for an inevitable measurement error. Hence,
a low power operation is highly recommended to the use of a
thermistor. Otherwise, a permanent damage may be caused [13].
Humidity sensors are usually of resistive and capacitive
types. A hygristor comprises a thin layer of sense of the wet
film on top of the substrate. The resistance as well as the
capacitance of the component varies once there is a
moisture absorption on the thin film. Most common
humicaps are made up of polymer thin film capacitors, for
example, polystyrene, polyimide, cellulose acetate butyrate
and so on. A change in the dielectric constant, namely a
change in the capacitance, varies directly as the relative
humidity. Typically, an electronic humidity sensor is
measured to provide an accuracy level up to 2–3%RH,
higher than that provided by a wet and dry bulb [14].
3.4 Wind speed and direction sensor
Carbon dioxide is an essential reactant for photosynthesis to
occur. In a non-ventilative place, photosynthesis cannot be
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performed constantly, because of a shortage of continuous Table 2 Functions of command codes in a weather station
CO2 gas supply. Besides, a well-ventilated place can
Command code Function
prevent leaves from sunburn, but a plant would obtain
dehydrated instead in case of over ventilation. 0 × 48(H) read weather station model
As the most common type seen in weather stations, a cup 0 × 43(C) read the first part of the environmental data
anemometer is composed of three parabolic cones as the 0 × 44(D) read the second half of environmental data
sensors mounted in turn at equal angles to each other on a 0 × 58(X) leaving the operating environment
vertical shaft bracket. Cups are all oriented towards the
same direction, and rotate at an angular velocity
proportional to the wind speed. Another type of mechanical
velocity anemometer, referred to as a windmill or propeller
anemometer, comprises a three or four leaf propeller as the
sensor, mounted ahead of a wind vane, such that it is
aligned with the wind direction any time. In this manner,
vanes rotate at an angular velocity proportional to the wind
speed [15], just as a cup anemometer does.

3.5 Rainfall gauge

Rain water is seen as critical for plant growth. In the absence
of water, photosynthesis cannot be performed normally,
inhibiting plant growth. In contrast, aerobic respiration
cannot be performed, because of insufficient level of
oxygen contained in water for drowned plants. Instead, both
carbon dioxide and alcohol are generated as the outcome of
anaerobic respiration. Alcohol is found to be toxic to plant
roots. In the long run, the plant dies because of unhealthy
roots.
Rainfall is measured in milimeters. However, excessive
wind would bring about an wind-induced error in rainfall
measurement, and a funnel is likely to be blocked at a
temperature below the freezing point. Hence, wind and
temperature need to be taken into account when conducting
an accurate rainfall measurement.

3.6 Communication prototype

A string of symbols, 32 @s, is transmitted to the weather

station as requested, and the weather station is not operated
until a message, 0 × 4F4B0D0A (OK), is replied to the
server. The command packet format is tabulated in Table 1.
The model number of a weather station and environment
monitoring parameters are received following operating
instructions, as tabulated in Table 2, issued by the weather
station.
As demonstrated in Fig. 2a, a complete cycle of weather
station data access is monitored by Access Port, a serial
port monitoring tool.
The above is devoted to communication command formats
for a weather station, while an illustration of weather station
operation will be given as follows using a pseudo code
(Fig. 2b).

3.7 Sensor specifications

A number of environmental parameters are monitored by

built-in humidity/temperature meter, rainfall gauge,
anemoscope, anemometer and added barometer and sunlight
sensor. Sensor specifications are given in Table 3.

Table 1 Command packet format in a weather station

Fig. 2 Complete cycle of weather station data access
Start character Command code End character a Monitoring on weather station operation
b Weather station operation pseudo code
0 × 24($) 1byte 0 × 0D0A c Watchdog configuration in SpecWare
d Weather monitor in SpecWare

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Table 3 Sensor specifications Table 4 Prototype format in ZigBee communication
Sensors Measurement range Error value Header LQI Address len data Check sum

anemometer 0, 2–150 mph ±2 mph, ±5% 1byte 1byte 2byte 1byte 1–97byte 1byte
anemoscope 1o increments ±4o
thermometer −25° to 212°F ±1°F
hygrometer 10–100% ±3%
rain gauge 0.01″ (0.25 mm) ±2% at <2 in Yet, the operation mode is not seen during data transmission
resolution (5 cm)/ in transparent mode, but data received by a ZigBee node is
sunshine 1–1500 W/m2 ±5%
illuminometer automatically sent back to a receiving node. In this context,
ZigBee clients are operated in transparent mode. The
proposed ZigBee network architecture is sketched in Fig. 3a.
As demonstrated in Fig. 3a, ZigBee operations in both
3.8 SpecWare 9 Pro – spectrum modes are monitored by Access Port and can be made
distinguishable hereby (see Fig. 3b).
The SpecWare tools are operated together with a weather In binary mode, ZigBee packets are built for data reception
station via an RS-232 interface. As demonstrated in Figs. 2c and transmission from ZigBee nodes. Table 4 gives ZigBee
and d, data ports are assigned to respective sensors of a communication prototype format.
weather station, and an easy to use interface is then configured.
(1) Header: It is composed of the packet type (the four most
4 ZigBee technique significant bits) and the number of data (the four least
significant bits). The presented packet type is for the
ZigBee communication is operated in two modes, namely, the transmission and reception of data numbered between 0xA
binary and transparent modes. In the former, data are and 0xE.
transmitted in the form of ZigBee data packet, and the (2) LQI: It signifies the quality of data connection. The
embedded ZigBee node number can be retrieved by value of LQI is specified as 0 × 00 for data transmission,
dismantling ZigBee packet as a way to identify the sources while is displayed merely during data reception.
of data. Hence, ZigBee master are operated in this mode. (3) Address: A 2-byte address represents the target and
source node numbers, between 0 and 65 535, during data
transmission and reception, respectively.
(4) Len: It denotes the length of data in bytes.
(5) Data: It represents the content carried in a data packet.
(6) Check Sum: Each of the aforementioned bytes are
XORed as the value of Check Sum for correctness
verification.

An illustration of ZigBee packets is given as follows using

pseudo code (Fig. 3c).

5 Development tool
InduSoft Web Studio™ (IWS) is a powerful integrated
collection of automation tools supported on Microsoft(r)
Windows(r) NT/2000/XP/Server2003 and Winds(r) for
supervisory control and data acquisition or HMI
applications. The features of IWS are given as follows:

† online remote management and configuration,

† the Internet/Intranet nodes, all being monitored in real time
with a web browser through TCP/IP configuration,
† a powerful and flexible database management system,
covering Boolean, integer number, real number, strings,
tags, array tags, classes and indirect tag-pointers operations,
† API functions for data transfer between IWS and exterior
programs,
† TCP/IP master slave modules for data transfer between
computers whereby a redundant system is built and
† a schedule management feature, and specific programs can
be executed at a specific point in time, on a regular basis, or in
case of any particular event at a maximum operating
frequency of 100 ms.

Fig. 3 Proposed ZigBee network architecture 6 Proposed algorithm

a ZigBee based network architecture
b Data communication monitoring in various operation modes Centre data aggregation algorithm refers to a key algorithm
c ZigBee packets pseudo code when applied to network layer for data aggregation. It is

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presented as four steps, namely, construction of level gradient
field, centring of the region of interest, data aggregation tree
construction and reporting information package. A level
gradient field refers to an outward gradient by flooding with
a sink as the centre. In this manner, all the data are
propagated from each node in specified directions, and the
minimum hops required to the sink is given accordingly.
The entire procedure is stated as follows [16]:
(1) The initial level of the sink is specified as Ls = 0, while
those of all the source nodes are as Li = ∞.
(2) The sink broadcasts probe packets containing the value
of Ls.
(3) A probe packet sent from node j is received by nodej. In
case Li > Lj + 1, then node j is regarded as a higher gradient
node, and Li is updated as Lj + 1 in the probe packet for
subsequent broadcast. Otherwise, the probe packet is
disregarded, a broadcast packet is not issued by node i, and
node j is not recorded if Li < Lj + 1, but is recorded as a
higher gradient node if Li = Lj + 1.
A level gradient field is employed as a way to specify the
minimum hops and data propagation direction towards
the sink from a node through level characterisation. Ideally,
the data aggregation is performed at a point within the
region of interest for efficiency concern. Assuming that line
sensor is triggered by some nodes in the network of the
source node of a collection of vertices of graph G set V(G),
defines the centre of G, let MVV(i) = max{d(I, J )} denote
the maximum distance between the vertex i and any other
vertex, and an arbitrary vertex x satisfies MVV(x) = min
{MVV(i)}, that is, the centre is the furthest away from the
vertex closest any vertex x [17].
Aggregation tree construction: once the centre is located,
the minimum hops h between c and the farthest node can
be evaluated. Letting threshold time decrement parameter
ΔT = TWC/h, the algorithm addresses aggregation tree
construction. Data reporting: the data, received from all the
child nodes of an intermediate node, are aggregated first
together with those by the intermediate node itself, and are
then report to the father node thereof. In case of any node
Fig. 4 HMI example
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malfunction, all the data from the child node is expected
until a abort packet is received at the gate time value TWC.
Proposed by Dorigo in recent times, ant colony algorithm
refers to a novel analogue evolutionary algorithm [18] that
successfully resolves a great number of optimisation
problems, for example, TSP, JSP etc., because of the
similarity between the ant foraging behaviour and the
problems addressed.
Observations reveal that in an ant colony, pioneers release a
certain type of pheromone on their way, base on which
followers can find their way to move forward. It is a
positive feedback event that ant followers are more likely to
choose a path with a higher level of pheromone left behind.
For this sake, the optimal route between an ant lair and
food is located, and the level of pheromone along such
route is elevated, while those over other routes diminish
over time. In a centre data aggregation algorithm, a flood
routing approach is employed with the sink as the centre to
build a level gradient field. In this manner, the routes of
data relay between nodes as well as the minimum hopsuired
to reach the sinks are clearly specified, which is an easy to
implement approach in practical applications at a cost of
highly complicated routing. A high density of sensor nodes
brings about network traffic jam, namely a short network
life cycle. In an attempt to extend the network life cycle,
this study presents a improved version of the
aforementioned data aggregation algorithm where an ant
colony approach is applied to the construction of a level
gradient field. In analogy to the critical role that pheromone
plays in the ant foraging behaviour, gradient field is
constructed along corresponding routes, assuming the sink
will put its ID wafts across all nodes in the network. The
number of hops is evaluated following the reception of data
packets. The moment a source node tries to transmit data,
there is a probability Pk(i, j) that the next node is visited by
ant k, located at node i, expressed as
⎧
⎪
⎪ 0, s
Nk (i)
⎨
Pk (i, j) = t(i, j) h(i, j)b
a
⎪
, j [ Nk (i) (1)
⎪
⎩ t(i, u)h(i, j)b
u=NK
where Nk(i) denotes a set composed of nodes that have not yet
been visited by ant k, t(i, j) is the level of pheromone left
behind along the route between nodes i and j, d(i, j) is the
distance between nodes i and j, η(i, j) = (1/d(i, j)) is the
heuristic factor, that is, visibility path, α ≥ 0 the relative
importance of the amount of information and β ≥ 0 the
relative importance of heuristic information. Once all the
nodes are visited by the entire ant colony, the amount of
information along each path is updated as
t(i,j) (t + 1) = (1 − r)t(i, j) + Dt(i, j) (2)
where ρ ∈ (0, 1) represents the evaporation rate of
pheromone, Δt(i, j) the increment of the amount of
information along the route between nodes i and j, given by
⎧
⎨ 0; (i, j)
r
Dt(i, j) = Q (3)
⎩ ; (i, j) [ r
LK
where Q denotes a constant representing the total amount of
pheromone released in the course of a complete route
search, LK is the total length of the route, ρ is the route
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along which an ant travels. That is all the improvement made
in the construction of a level gradient field for the proposed
centre data aggregation algorithm, and the rest can be found
in [16].

7 Experimental analysis and performance

comparison
7.1 Measurement comparison
As presented in Fig. 4, real time monitoring on a number of
environmental parameters, namely, temperature, humidity,
wind direction as well as speed, rainfall, daylight
illuminance and so on, is performed by an outdoor ZigBee
based weather station, and is displayed on a HMI.
Measurement comparisons are conducted with the data
acquired by a temperature and humidity sensor module
(FLAG-1613A) as a reference. Over a period of 30 min, the
temperature together with the humidity is sensed per 5 s by
both the presented weather station and the reference
module. The comparisons indicate average errors of 0.42
and 3.02% and maximum errors of 0.68 and 4.23% in
temperature and humidity measurements, respectively.
These errors are seen as acceptable in the aspect of
environment monitoring, validating the measurement
accuracy of this proposal.
As stated previously, comparisons are conducted on data
collected over a period of 30 min, that is, a total of 360
pieces of data. WT = {wt1, wt2, …, wtn} and WH = {wh1, wh2,
…, whn} represent respective sets composed of the
temperature and humidity data sensed by the employed
weather station, whereas FT = {ft1, ft2, …, ftn} and FH = Fig. 5 Temperature and the humidity errors
{fh1, fh2, …, fhn} represent those by the FLAG-1613 sensor a Measured temperature comparison with FLAG-1613A as a reference
module. The error rate collections E is given as b Measured humidity comparison with FLAG-1613A as a reference

W −F
E= × 100% (4) Exhibited in Fig. 6d is an environment parameter
F
comparison between a beautiful shiny day and a gloomy
Following the evaluation of ET and EH through (4), mean rainy day. A layer of cloud clumps overhead in a rainy day
values of ET and EH are evaluated by accounts for a relatively low solar radiation, a relatively
high humidity over 90% and a relatively low atmospheric
N pressure.
= 1
E e (5)
N i=1 i
7.3 Simulated sensor network over a farm field
Accordingly, E  H = 3.02, the dispersion of E
 T = 0.42 and E A sensing problem is simulated by a Matlab 7.0 program
is defined as under an assumption that there are a single sink, 6–10
source nodes and 100–150 sensors randomly deployed over


an field of 80 m × 80 m with a communication radius of 8

1  N
s= 2
(e − E) (6) m, respective energy consumption of 35 and 28 nJ/bit
N − 1 i=1 i during data transmission and reception, ρ = 0.2 and β = 10.
As modelled in [18, 19], the energy consumed when
sending a data packet is evaluated as
and σT = 0.160%, σH = 1.17%. The temperature and the
humidity errors are, respectively, plotted against the
numbering of sensed data in Figs. 5a and b, and good Esend = Etrane × s + Eamp × d 2 (7)
agreements are indicated therein.
where Esend denotes the energy required to transmit a single
7.2 Measured data fluctuation bit of data, s is the size of a data packet, Eamp is the energy
consumed by a signal amplifier and d is the transmission
Plotted in Figs. 6a–d are a whole day monitoring on the distance. Likewise, the energy consumed when receiving a
environment temperature, humidity and solar radiation data packet is evaluated as
collected by the proposed outdoor weather station. It is
clearly indicated that the temperature increases, but the Ereceive = Erec × r (8)
humidity decreases, with the solar radiation in direct
relation to the relative position of sun and earth. As suggested in [8], the energy required for the completion of

1138 IET Commun., 2014, Vol. 8, Iss. 7, pp. 1132–1140

& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2014 doi: 10.1049/iet-com.2013.0995
 www.ietdl.org
centring process, Lend is the size of a abort package, Lack is
the size of an ACK packet, Lrec is the size of the reporting
information package generated by a source node, lecen is the
level of the centre, Es = eel + eampL 2, eel is the constant level
of energy consumed by a node during data transmission, eel
is the minimum level of energy consumption for data
transmission, eamp is the longest amplification factor during
data transmission and L is the communication radius.
Plotted in Fig. 7a is a result comparison of the energy
consumption against the number of nodes. The major
difference between a typical data aggregation algorithm and
this work is that an ant colony approach, rather than a flood
routing technique, is employed in the construction of a level

Fig. 6 Whole day monitoring on the

a Temperature record for a full day on an hourly basis
b Humidity record for a full day on an hourly basis
c Solar radiation record for a full day on an hourly basis
d Comparisons of environmental parameters between a gloomy rainy day and
a beautiful shinny day

Fig. 7 Comparison of the energy consumption against the number

data reporting is given as
of nodes

Eaggr = Lcen N (h + 1) + Lend N + Lack (N − 1)
+ Lrec (N − 1) + Lrec lecen Es
where Lcen denotes the size of a probe packet during the
IET Commun., 2014, Vol. 8, Iss. 7, pp. 1132–1140
doi: 10.1049/iet-com.2013.0995
a Energy consumption comparison among this proposed, GIT and standard
centre data aggregation algorithms
(9) b Maximum life cycle comparison of source nodes among this proposed, GIT
and standard centre data aggregation algorithms
c Average data transmission delay comparison among this proposed, GIT and
standard centre data aggregation algorithms
1139
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2014
www.ietdl.org
gradient field in analogy to the role of pheromone released in
the foraging behaviour of an ant colony, such that the
optimal route is located. In this manner, a large amount of
duplication of information diffusion can be reduced
considerably, giving rise to reduced energy consumption by
nodes deployed along non-backbone path. Thus, this
proposal is found to be a superior energy efficient algorithm
relative to the other two [20, 21].
Presented in Fig. 7b is a result comparison of the lifetime
against the number of nodes among the proposed algorithm,
a routing algorithm and a typical centre data aggregation
algorithm. At a node number of 12, this proposal exhibits a
lifetime of approximately 320 rounds, a figure much higher
than that provided by the other two, that is, approximately
212 rounds. This is simply because of the reason that
identical path is shared by an ant colony through a greater
number of fusion node, namely, the energy consumption is
reduced remarkably, and the maximum life cycle is extended.
Exhibited in Fig. 7c is a result comparison of the average delay
in data relay against the number of nodes. The DD routing
algorithm is found to be the one with the minimum amount of
delay, since the simple but efficient strategy of ‘Inhibition
Copy’ is employed, that is, repeated delivery of data is
avoided. In contrast, this proposal is the one with the
maximum delay. In a typical centre data aggregation
algorithm, level gradient field is built with ease by flooding
routing in the absence of topology maintenance and routing
computation. Yet, it required three additional stages to obtain
the construction of the level gradient field done, accounting for
a higher level of data delay than in a DD routing algorithm,
and the maximum delay seen in this proposed algorithm is
attributed to the level gradient field construction similar to the
pheromone level left behind in an ant colony [22, 23].
8 Conclusions
This work aims to improve the monitoring technique for
environment parameters sensed by weather stations for
agricultural development. In this way, farming can be made
highly efficient. Data fusion technology can be used with
multiple protocol layers in combined sensor networks. The
amount of data transmission is reduced, thus saving energy
throughout the network. The ant colony algorithm is applied
to the centre of fusion algorithms, making the research more
efficient with data fusion and accuracy. Agricultural
environmental monitoring techniques are seen as a
prerequisite to an automated plant factory. In the very near
future, it is hoped that environmental parameters can be
optimised for an automated farm cultivating a wide diversity
of plants as a way to reduce the impact of climate change on
plant growth. The development of energy efficient algorithms
has become accepted for data aggregation in wireless sensor
networks. In this regard, an improved version of the centre
data aggregation algorithm based on the ant colony algorithm
is presented in this study. The proposed algorithm fulfills the
energy efficiency requirement and extends the network life
cycle. This proposed algorithm is validated by computer
simulations as an energy efficient algorithm superior to a
typical centre data aggregation algorithm constructed using
the flooding routing technique.
9 Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the National Science Council
of Taiwan under grant NSC 100-2218-E-167-001- and NSC
1140
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2014
101-2622-E-167-006-CC3. The authors would like to thank
National Chin-Yi University of Technology, Taiwan for
financially supporting this research.
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