A smart sensor for precision agriculture powered by microbial fuel cells

The level of underground freshwater plays a key role in human activities, in particular in agriculture. Monitoring the level of phreatic aquifers is very important to protect and to preserve this resource. We present a smart, ultra-low power (in the order of mJ), cheap and energy neutral system capable to monitor periodically and remotely the level of phreatic aquifers. The power supply is given by a single terrestrial Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) and the measurements are carried out by means of a low cost capacitive phreatimeter and can be sent from km away through a long range radio. The overall power consumption is kept low, and power losses are mitigated thank to transient computing paradigm.