A modern Smart Irrigation System based on precision control for precision agriculture and wireless mesh radio communication gives a huge return on investment, ultra-low power for energy saving, best range and coverage, and unmatched robustness!
Radiocrafts has upgraded our State-of-the-Art Sub-GHz wireless mesh solution, RIIM, to the requirements of this domain based on feedback from top tier Smart Irrigation customers.
What makes RIIM an ideal solution for Smart Irrigation?
- Highly Scalable Network – Cover an entire semi-rural open environment as large as 80 x 80 km² (50 x 50 mi²) with up to 1000 sensors on a single gateway.
- Long Range – Long range with the possibility to have up to 1000 devices in a single network reduces the cost of installation as less gateways are needed to support a large-scale deployment and it simplifies radio coverage planning. RIIM supports a radio communication range of up to 1400 meters between devices in an open semi-rural area. In addition, a RIIM data packet can also spread across the network by hopping from device to device up to 28 times (28 mesh hops).
- Symmetrical 2-way communication – Essential for collecting sensor readings (uplink communication), controlling devices such as valves (downlink communication), and over-the-air updates. With Smart Irrigation Systems, often, many locations are hard-to-reach and will be in operation for many years, so touchless updates of firmware are important.
- Unmatched robustness in data transmission success rates – RIIM supports various features that enable a data packet success rate of 99.99%.
- Very Low Power for Battery Operation – A RIIM node configured as a mesh router can handle down to 118 uA at 3.3v average power consumption enabling all battery devices in the network to further extend the network coverage.
- High-throughput networking with minimal packet loss – Essential to keep up with the vast amounts of data communication required by a modern Smart Irrigation deployment. RIIM supports a feature called Adaptive Frequency Agility which allows you to take the duty cycle in Europe from 1% to 40% providing high-throughput networking.
- Time-synchronization – Management of exact start and stop times for certain events such as, starting irrigation of a certain part of the field immediately after irrigation stops in another part of the field to decrease water pressure in the pipes.
- Radiocrafts’ ICI Framework – Embedded in the module, it allows you to directly interface to virtually any sensor/actuator, such as soil moisture sensors, UV sensors, rain/freeze sensors, wind sensors, and more.
- And much more!
You can learn more about our state-of-the-art RIIM solution for Smart Irrigation applications on our dedicated Smart Irrigation landing page.
You can find documentation on RIIM including application notes describing these various features in detail in our document library.
Want to test RIIM for your own Smart Irrigation projects? Buy a development kit or samples from Radiocrafts from Digi-Key or from a distribution partner near you!