Multi-Channel WSNs for Environmental Monitoring in Plant Factory

Some factors, such as temperature and humidity, may have a large impact on crop growth. Recently, plant factory has become a new cultivation technique in agriculture, and all environmental parameters in plant factory are controlled thereby the crops can be stably supplied. However, uneven temperature distribution can be still found in plant factories, so additional sensor techniques, including wireless sensor networks should be employed to monitor the environment in plant factories. A large number of sensors densely deployed in a closed space may increase the chance of packet collision, causing data loss. With incomplete data, the variation in temperature may not be detected. In order to solve the problem of data loss, this study proposes a multi-channel mechanism to avoid the packet collision in a plant factory.