SoilCares: Towards Low-cost Soil Macronutrient and Moisture Monitoring Using RF-VNIR Sensing

Conference: MobiSys 2024

SoilCares is a low-cost multimodal RF-VNIR sensing system for simultaneous monitoring of soil moisture and macronutrients, including nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. It introduces a membrane-based interface to mitigate particle-size and soil-texture variations, enabling robust in-situ sensing without laboratory preprocessing such as drying or grinding.

Highlights

• Multimodal RF-VNIR sensing for soil moisture and NPK monitoring
• Membrane-enabled robust in-situ measurement across soil types and textures
• Low-cost, portable, and low-power sensing prototype
• Negligible-cost LoRa communication using existing sensing hardware