Simulation of Internet of Things Water Management for Efficient Rice Irrigation in Rwanda

Abstract

The central role of water access for agriculture is a clear challenge anywhere in the world and particularly in areas with significant seasonal variation in rainfall such as in Eastern and Central Africa. The combination of modern sensor technologies, the Internet, and advanced irrigation equipment combined in an Internet of Things (IoT) approach allow a relatively precise control of agricultural irrigation and creating the opportunity for high efficiency of water use for agricultural demands. This IoT approach can thereby increase the resilience of agricultural systems in the face of complex demands for water use. Most previous works on agricultural IoT systems are in the context of countries with higher levels of economic development. However, in Rwanda, with a low level of economic development, the advantages of efficient water use from the application of IoT technology requires overcoming constraints such as lack of irrigation control for individual farmers, lack of access to equipment, and low reliability of power and Internet access. In this work, we describe an approach for adapting previous studies to the Rwandan context for rice (Oryza sativa) farming with irrigation. The proposed low cost system would automatically provide irrigation control according to seasonal and daily irrigational needs when the system sensors and communications are operating correctly. In cases of system component failure, the system switches to an alternative prediction mode and messages farmers with information about the faults and realistic irrigation options until the failure is corrected. We use simulations to demonstrate, for the Muvumba Rice Irrigation Project in Northeast Rwanda, how the system would respond to growth stage, effective rainfall, and evapotranspiration for both correct operation and failure scenarios.

Internet of Things based Smart Irrigation Control System for Paddy Field

“…Farmers need to learn a different fieldwork knowledge compare with their long-term experience and have a higher fieldwork load. Fortunately, based on the technology's development, several water-saving techniques based on rice production systems are established by advanced equipment and applications, e.g., Asnawi & Syukriasari (2019); Bamurigire, Vodacek, Valko, & Rutabayiro Ngoga (2020). However, these kinds of systems and related facilities typically come with a high price.…”

“…Levidow et al (2014) pointed out that a smart cultivation system provides farmers with a simple, instant, easy-to-use, free system to help farmers determine the daily irrigation amount and provide many crops possible to promote watersaving irrigation technologies and increase the utilization rate. Although there are many studies on developing and using Internet of Things (IoT) technology to help rice paddy field observation and automatic fieldwork operation, there only a few studies have been found integrating IoT and irrigation on an integer system (Bamurigire, Vodacek, Valko, & Rutabayiro Ngoga, 2020;Krishnan et al, 2020), especially in advanced Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) technique and application guideline on watersaving irrigation. Due to the water-saving irrigation has considerable benefits to the environment and the income of farmers, this study is focusing on modern technology to develop paddy field observation equipment with smartphone-based real-time field data display system and cultivation calendar notification based on NB-IoT, to decrease the threshold for farmers to conduct water-saving irrigation technology.…”

Will the Adoption of Early Fertigation Techniques Hinder Famers’ Technology Renewal? Evidence from Fresh Growers in Shaanxi, China

“…Lu and Xie found that a labor shortage can exacerbate agricultural non-point source pollution caused by chemical fertilizer [5]. Additionally, a larger planting scale requires more efficient and labor-saving agricultural technologies [8]. Therefore, with as advantages its labor-saving characteristics and large-scale application, the Intelligent Irrigation Control System (IICS) has become a possible solution [9].…”

Quantum Clone Elite Genetic Algorithm‐Based Evaluation Mechanism for Maximizing Network Efficiency in Soil Moisture Wireless Sensor Networks

“…The Internet of things technology develops quickly, and soil moisture sensor networks (SMWSNs) are already used in the actual production process. Moreover, the development of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and big data has also greatly improved SMWSN efficiency [2][3][4]. However, due to the particularity of soil moisture sensors, the original evaluation mechanism for wireless sensor networks is not well applicable to SMWSNs, so it is urgent to propose a novel network efficiency evaluation mechanism [5].…”

“…(3) A quantum clone elite genetic algorithm (QCEGA) that combines the concepts of quantum computing and cloning is proposed. This algorithm can obtain the optimal target allocation method and has good convergence performance (4) The target allocation method based on QCEGA is compared with SA and PSO in terms of network efficiency, convergence performance, and computational complexity…”