Aerospace and Electronic Systems - March 2019 - 56

Feature Article:

DOI. No. 10.1109/MAES.2019.2905947

Energy-Efﬁcient Routing Algorithm Based on
Localization and Clustering Techniques for
Agricultural Applications
€t Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Germany;
Sabrine Khriji, Technische Universita
University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia
Dhouha El Houssaini, Technische Universita¨t Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Germany;
Technopark of Sousse, Sousse, Tunisia
Ines Kammoun, University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia
Kamel Besbes, Technopark of Sousse, Sousse, Tunisia
Olfa Kanoun, Technische Universita¨t Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Germany

INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, modern agriculture needs to use new technologies to improve the efficiency, the quantity, and the quality
of products. Actually, recent advances in microelectronic,
micro-electro-mechanical systems, information and sensor
technologies have enabled the creation of small and cheap
sensors making the deployment phase much easier in
different scenarios, such as animal tracking, forest control,
crop, and yield monitoring. Furthermore, wireless sensor
networks (WSNs) are flexible in use, reliable in harsh environment, provide closed-loop control abilities, and allow
Authors' current addresses: Sabrine Khriji, Chair for
Measurement and Sensor Technology, Technische
Universit€at, 09111 Chemnitz, Germany; LETI Laboratory,
National Engineering School of Sfax, University of Sfax,
3029 Sfax, Tunisia. Dhouha El Houssaini, Chair for
Measurement and Sensor Technology, Technische
Universit€at, 09111 Chemnitz, Germany; Centre for
Research on Microelectronics and Nanotechnology,
Technopark of Sousse, 4000 Sousse, Tunisia. Ines
Kammoun, LETI Laboratory, National Engineering
School of Sfax, University of Sfax, 3029 Sfax, Tunisia.
Kamel Besbes, Centre for Research on Microelectronics
and Nanotechnology, Technopark of Sousse, 4000
Sousse, Tunisia. Olfa Kanoun, Chair for Measurement
and Sensor Technology, Technische Universita¨t, 09111
Chemnitz, Germany.
Manuscript received September 30, 2018; revised
December 13, 2018. ready for publication January 23,
2019.
Review handled by Silvia ULLO and Peter Willett.
0885/8985/19/$26.00 ß 2019 IEEE
56

a lager coverage space with higher temporal and spatial resolution. Another aspect of using sensor nodes is to reduce
the work load; thus, a reduction in the expenses related to
the deployment, usage, and maintenance [1]. Furthermore,
WSNs offer real-time information about the changes in the
field and about the state of crops supporting precision farming by monitoring parameters and providing periodic data.
Wireless communication provides about 80% reduction of the total cost of the network compared to the wired
solutions [2]. WSNs should be easy to build, use, maintain, and upgrade. Thus, if every node is powered via a
battery, recharging, or changing batteries from one time
to another, especially, for a large-scale network becomes
impracticable. Generally, in harsh environment, the
deployment of nodes presents a complex structure where
surveillance and maintenance are hard or even unrealistic,
especially in case of massive-scale deployment such as
transportation, battlefield surveillance, and surface exploration [3]. A primary constraint in such scenarios is the
limited battery power available for node operation, which
affects the performance of the network. Thus, prolonging
lifetime of wireless sensor nodes by energy efficiency is
an issue that should be highly considered. Therefore,
developing techniques for energy harvesting and wireless
energy transmission have been investigated [4].
Wireless communication is a greedy source of energy
dissipation. For this, different communication schemes,
such as data aggregation, routing, and scheduling algorithms
were developed for agricultural applications based on WSN
in which the common objective is the reduction of the
energy consumption. In this paper, we address the problem
of energy-efficient routing in WSNs. We propose a routing

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