Smart Watermeter Design for Agricultural Irrigation Applications

Most of the water resources throughout the world are used for agricultural irrigation purposes.  The decrease in water resources due to climate change as a result of global warming has increased the importance of water in agricultural production. To meet the food demand of the increasing population, especially in countries suffering from water scarcity, new methods are needed to increase productivity in agricultural irrigation. In parallel to the development of technology, the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as a result of rapid advances in microelectronics and wireless communication. During the last decade, there are many applications have been carried out in different fields by using the Internet of Things model. One of these applications is the new generation of measuring devices called smart meters used in electricity, water, and natural gas measurements. In this study, we have introduced a novel smart water meter hardware design for agricultural irrigation applications.  Since the designed smart water meter has wireless connection capability, it allows instant monitoring of water consumption over a remote server and also irrigation management. On this basis, it is possible to stop irrigation when the predetermined quota is exceeded and to quickly detect illegal usage.