干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

We discuss the key issues in the deployment of sparse sensor networks. The network monitors several environment parameters and is deployed in a semi-arid region for the benefit of small and marginal farmers. We begin by discussing the problems of an existing unreliable 1 sq km sparse network deployed in a village. The proposed solutions are implemented in a new cluster. The new cluster is a reliable 5 sq km network. Our contributions are two fold. Firstly, we describe a. novel methodology to deploy a sparse reliable data gathering sensor network and evaluate the "safe distance" or "reliable" distance between nodes using propagation models. Secondly, we address the problem of transporting data from rural aggregation servers to urban data centres. This paper tracks our steps in deploying a sensor network in a village in India, trying to provide better diagnosis for better crop management. Keywords - Rural, Agriculture, CTRS, Sparse.