Real-Time Monitoring of Environmental Parameters in a Commercial Gestating Sow House Using a ZigBee-Based Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract

Significant intensification in livestock farming has become prevalent to meet the increasing meat production demand, resulting in a higher density of pigs in relatively small areas in a commercial swine building. The subsequent challenges of maintaining the quality of both routine management and environmental comfort of pigs to minimize the loss of both pigs’ health and welfare can be attained by implementing autonomous monitoring and intelligent management decisions based on precision livestock farming (PLF). A three-layer wireless sensor network (WSN) based on ZigBee technology has been devised to monitor four environmental parameters in real-time, namely: temperature, relative humidity, concentrations of carbon dioxide and ammonia in a commercial gestating sow house. The overall packet loss rate of the WSN system which reported 16,371 records from its 41 indoor slave nodes in a 10-min interval for three consecutive days was 4%. The carbon dioxide sensors had an average outlier rate of 6.5% after a series of preprocessing procedures. The spatial and temporal characteristics showed that the carbon dioxide level exceeded the limit of 2700 mg/m3 twice during both 07:00–08:00 and 14:00–15:00. Besides, the overall NH3 concentration in the swine building was maintained in a relatively low-level range with a maximum of less than 8 mg/m3. In sum, the real-time monitoring and timely intervention of microclimate in this commercial gestating sow house can be achieved by deploying this WSN system, thereby making it possible to provide an intelligent decision on precise management of livestock automatically.

Applications of Smart Technology as a Sustainable Strategy in Modern Swine Farming

“…To detect environmental parameters: temperature, relative humidity, concentrations of carbon dioxide and ammonia in pig house Zeng et al [35]; Ahmed et al [23].…”

An overview of IoT based intelligent irrigation systems for greenhouse: Recent trends and challenges

“…So, the wired greenhouse system is not suitable for large or commercial greenhouses. The advantage is that data transactions are safe and have minimal interference [51,53,54]. WSN is the latest technology in intelligent farming that can be expanded and scaled up without modifying the greenhouse infrastructure.…”

“…However, the increase in greenhouse size, the number of parameters, sensors variety, node size, and devices distant is not a problem because an additional WSN only needs to be attached to an existing network. Another advantage is Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) technology, wirelessly connected sensor nodes network to sense and send various data, and extensible [36,54,55]. The implementation of WSN in agriculture itself is extensive, with sensors, RFID, cameras, drones, and cloud services connected seamlessly for data acquisition and transmission.…”

“…Fuzzy control manages decisions based on weather forecasts and user interactions. [54] also took a similar approach to measure leaf temperature, air temperature, and soil moisture using three connected sensors to assess the level of microclimate in a greenhouse and use Zigbee to transmit sensor data. Controlling the microclimate in the greenhouse by using fan ventilation and fan-pad ventilation can also be an option.…”

Numerical Simulation of Airflow Distribution in a Pregnant Sow Piggery with Centralized Ventilation

“…Airflow distribution is important in livestock houses and affects the indoor temperature and humidity, convective heat transfer, and pollutant gaseous emissions [8]. The thermal environment of a piggery is affected by physical parameters such as air temperature, relative humidity, air velocity, and turbulence [9], among which air temperature has the greatest impact on pigs [10,11]. Pigs need to maintain a constant body temperature for their normal physiological activities [12].…”