High-Density Wi-Fi Based Sensor Network for Efficient Irrigation Management in Precision Agriculture

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This studies proposes and validates wireless technologies to deploy a high-density network of nodes (based on sensors) on precision agriculture. Overall, the topic is innovative and the paper is well structured.

Below are some comments for authors to consider to improve the manuscript quality.

1. Line 31: ‘Regulated Deficit Irrigation (RDI)’ should be ‘Regulated deficit irrigation (RDI)’.
2. The same issue occurs in line 58 for IoT; line 124 Control Treatment, and please check through the entire paper.
3. Line 59: ‘low consumption’, should be ‘low energy consumption’.
4. Line 102: manufacture of the dripper
5. Line 103: remove ‘automated’
6. Line 132: which university?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We really appreciate your thorough revision of our manuscript and your comments. We have considered all your suggestions and have introduced the necessary changes to improve the article accordingly.

Best Regards,

The authors.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors, at the beginning I have some editorial comments:

Line 123:

When you use decimal fractions better way will be use of dots instead of commas especially when fractions are separated with commas in the text. Moreover at the end of this line should be a space before "and".

Please carefully check again your manuscript because sometimes you use space between number and unit, for example: 327 mm (line 108), 500 g (line 149) and sometimes don't use spaces 19dBi (line 136), 5GHz (line 141), 2.4GHz (lines 159, 160). But in Figure 1 there spaces are.

In the Table 1 one of the columns is described as "Power" but below values of current are given (mA). Moreover in the columns "Range" and "Accuracy" the VWC abbreviation is used. I know that you mean "volumetric water content" because it concerns a soil moisture sensor. But it should be explained e.g. in line 155 when this term was used first time. In fact, in the description of the Figure 10, the "WVC" is explained but "WVC"... not "VWC". However, please delete WVC from line 339, it is redundant there. Moreover, the "URL" column is unnecessary, especially that the same link is written three times. I suggest to delete this column and widen others column of the table such as "Measured data", "Accuracy". The table will be easier to read. If you want to show URLs, I suggest place it directly below Table 1 and add upper footnote to each of sensor. Something like that: in the table: 10HS⁽¹⁾  and below table:

(1) https://www.metergroup.com

 

In the Figure 2 and Figure 3 block diagrams for type-A and B are presented. As I understand, one of the novelties of your work are SensorBoard A and SensorBoard B. You presents many pictures like: MEWiN board, different sensors, and commercially available ESP8266 and Pycom ESP32. But also it would be interesting to see the SensorsBoardA and B. I don't expect an electronic diagram because I understand that this is your intellectual property. However some photos of these boards would be appreciated by the reader.

 

Line 237:

How big is this time drift daily?

 

Line 267:

There is a problem with a reference to equation.

 

Why in the Table 5 descriptions of columns are written using bold? While in Tables 3 and 4 is normal font.

 

This paper is of good quality, everything is described correctly but I see one quite big problem. The subject of your work is "High-density Wi-Fi based sensor network". As you noticed in the introduction (lines 62 and 63) there are numerous WSN in precise agriculture which use Wi-Fi. In the references there are approximately 40 articles about "wireless sensor networks" basing on ZigBee, LoRa or Wi-Fi.  Moreover, it is known that Wi-Fi is not to very energy-saving technology.

So the questions are:

Why do you deal with this topic?

Why is your system better than existing ones?

I have impression that the only novelty is PCBs design (SensorBoard A and B).

I appreciate data such as power consumption in various operating modes, because it is very valuable information for person who would like to built a similar system. But this type of data can be found in the datasheets of electronic devices.

This manuscript is a scientific publication and you should clearly indicate the main scientific achievement resulting from this work.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

your paper can be published in a present form. However, please take a look at line 281 in the pdf file. There is some problem with reference to equation. Instead of equation number there is "Error! Reference source not found..". This type of error sometimes appears during a file conversion from .doc to .pdf.