Recipient Organization
GROGURU, INC.
4250 EXECUTIVE SQUARE STE 200
LA JOLLA,CA 920378404
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Currently soil moisture monitoring is used on approximately 10% of the irrigated acrease in the U.S. The limited deployment is not due to farmer's not accepting the value of soil moisture monitoring, but rather due to the cost, installation hurdles, and limitation on operations (such as tilling, spraying, harvesting) that deployed monitoring impacts. Key to expanding the reach of the monitoring is to reduce the cost, simplify installation and maintennance of systems, and reduce the impact on operations. Broad expansion of soil monitoring has huge impacts on agriculture through enhanced yields, reduced water usage, all lessening environmental impact. The project, in its essence, aimed at expanding GroGuru's Wireless UnderGround Sensor (WUGs) technology to support agriculture through enabling greatly expanded soil moisture monitoring. WUGs technology is key to allowing sensors to remain permanently in the field below ground (and hence not affecting tilling, harvesting, etc.). This has a dramatic impact on the lifetime costs of soil monitoring while dramatically reducing the impact on agriculture. The reduced cost and impact on operations will allow for broad expansion of soil monitoring and, hence, a large scale improvement in agricultural efficiency and environmental impact.
Animal Health Component
50%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
30%
Applied
50%
Developmental
20%
Goals / Objectives
GroGuru, Inc. has developed a unique telemetry system- Wireless UnderGround Sensor (WUGs) that enables low power, below ground to above ground telemerty of data that eliminates the need for soil moisture sensors to be tethered to an above ground repeater. This is key to dramatically expanding the scope of soil moisture monitoring in agriculture by allowing for permanent installation of below ground sensors.The overarching technical goal of the project is to establish the fundamental limits of the WUGs technology (size, power consumption, range, noise immunity) that fully elaborates the inherent performance window of the WUGs technology that will be used to guide further product conception and testing in Phase II.The three main subtasks are as follows.First, a simple coil design is being used for both the transmitter and receiver.The coil properties (particularly it's quality factor, Q) is critical in reducing both the power needed to transmit as well as the noise sensitivity of the receiver.Current coil Q is around 30 but an initial look at coil theory indicates Q's of 100+ may be achievable which will allow the transmit range to be increased, coil size reduced (key to implementing WUGs directly onto a sensor), and reducing power consumption (or a tradeoff of any of these three factors).Second, the receiver has been optimized for very low power consumption (2mW) which introduces many limitations on the receiver circuitry.Two way WUGs which is currently being developed, greatly reduces the need to minimize receiver power consumption as it facilitates the receiver being on only intermittently.In general, higher receiver power consumption is associated with lower noise levels on the receiver which facilitates the same potential benefits of improving coil Q.Third, the operating frequency of 174kHz and the modulation scheme for encoding data (on off key) were chosen to emphasize speed to market and not necessarily optimal.By shifting to higher frequencies where known atmospheric noise issues (the dominant source of electromagnetic noise in our frequency band) we may be able to reduce receiver noise.Also, we will be exploring a more sophisticated modulation scheme, frequency modulation, that in many applications drives down noise levels.As before, the same potential improvements are at play.Finally, the resulting potential improvements these avenues open up will be quantified and used as the key starting point for strategic planning of targeted next generation WUGs systems.
Project Methods
The methods for this project are:1) Theoretical analysis of key WUGs technolgoy which will include literature review and detailed calculations and theoretical performance specifications.2) The design, fabrication/assembly,and laboratory testing/validation of hardware that tests the theoretical insights gained (this will be the majority of the expended effort).3) Field testing of attractive prototype hardware.4) Detailed analysis and summary of the earlier tasks to provide a synopsis of attractive directions to take WUGs technology.