Optimal deployment of WSN nodes for crop monitoring based on geostatistical interpolations

This paper proposes an integrated method for the estimation of soil moisture in potato crops, by using a low-cost wireless sensor network (WSN). Soil moisture estimation maps were created by applying the Kriging technique over a WSN composed up to 11x11 nodes. In this regard, our goal is to estimate the soil moisture of the crop with a small-scale WSN. To this purpose, a Ground-Truth was assembled in order to validate the Kriging-driven interpolations. Experimental results demonstrated that 25 WSN nodes were optimal and sufficient for soil moisture characterization, achieving estimations errors