Wireless Sensor Network Node-Based Locusts’ Protection for Agricultural Fields

Abstract

Recently, there has been a frequent invasion of locusts in agricultural fields. Though locusts do not harm humans directly, they devour leaves on trees, agricultural harvests fruits, vegetables, crops and other green vegetation. The swarms of locusts are attacking more than 25 districts covering more than 50,000 hectares of desert areas of western India. The present paper proposes a unique solution to prevent the locust attack in agricultural field. Locusts can eat twice their size, therefore, a swarm of locusts can cause wide spread damage to the crop. According to Wikipedia, very small swarm eat the amount, 1 Km2, of food in one day that is sufficient for more than 34,000 people. The adult swarms or hopper bands travel long distances and devastate the several million hectares of crop. In the present paper, a wireless sensor network (WSN)-based unique solution to fight the plague of locusts is proposed. In the proposed technique, WSN nodes are deployed in vicinity of the agricultural field. The WSN nodes detect the arrival of adult swarm or hopper bands of locusts and send a signal to an actuator system in the field. The actuator in turn activates the sprinkler sprayer system that forces locusts to change their route. The proposed solution is very effective in terms of diverting the path of locust swarms.