A Wireless Sensor Network for Precision Agriculture and Its
Performance Source: Iowa State University The use of wireless
sensor networks is essential for implementation of information
and control technologies in precision agriculture. The authors
present their design of network stack for such an application
where sensor nodes periodically collect data from fixed
locations in a field. Their design of the PHYsical (PHY) layer
consists of multiple power modes in both the receive and
transmit operations for the purpose of achieving energy savings.
In addition, they design their MAC layer to use these multiple
power modes to improve the energy efficiency of wake-up
synchronization phase. Their MAC protocol also organizes all the
sender nodes to be synchronized with the receiver simultaneously
and transmit their data in a time scheduled manner.