Grant: Engage Grants Program

Controlled agriculture is now the normal operation for Canadian and International farmers using many sensorsand feedback to increase productivity and safety. In particular, environments in greenhouses are highlycontrolled, but tend to use primarily wired sensors. The goal of this project is to retro-fit existinghumidity, air temperature, CO2 emissions, water temperature and root zone moisture sensors used ingreenhouses to communicate wirelessly using the WirelessHART protocol.The recipient of this research will be Climate Control Systems Inc. a Canadian corporation that develops andmanufactures greenhouse automation systems since 1985. Climate Control Systems's sensors are currentlywired to their controller and envision that wireless sensors will place them in a leading position for supplyinghigh tech growing technology for greenhouse hydroponic flowers and vegetable crops.The UOIT research team under the guidance of Dr. Liscano have expertise in the design and analysis ofwireless sensor networks. Particular to this project, they will leverage a UML-based system-modeling tooldeveloped in the lab that will facilitate the design and analysis of wireless sensor systems at the modeling level.The tool leverages a custom specified UML prototype for sensor networks that is based on particular softwaredesign patterns that are specific to the sensor network and embedded software domain. The aim of thismodeling tool is to capture the design of the sensor node at a higher abstraction level than at the coding layerand verify the system design requirements and power consumption. For the team at UOIT, this project offers a""real"" testbed for this sensor network software modeling tool. For the partner the end result will be a softwareprototype of a Climate Control Systems' wireless sensor.