Modeling Path Loss with the Growth Stages of a Rice Plantation Using Fuzzy Linear Regression

Abstract

The application of a wireless sensor network (WSN) for infrastructure monitoring has become a popular method of reducing the labor cost and increasing production. However, WSN connectivity may be interrupted because of vegetative growth between communication nodes. To prevent this problem, this study applies models that employ fuzzy linear regression (FLR) to model the radio path loss (PL) for the WSN. The PL data in a crop field from recent works are reviewed and analyzed for the crop growth stages at 2.4 GHz frequency and selected to train the proposed FLR model. A vegetative factor (V) is defined as a membership function of a fuzzy set for the feasible PL data interval of the vegetative stage of crop growth. The obtained fuzzy set provides the upper and lower boundaries for predicting the PL in other stages, such as tiller initiation, panicle, flowering, and maturity. The PL in these stages includes the uncertainty from temperature, humidity, wind, and antenna heights. To prove the introduced concept, the proposed models were validated and compared to existing approaches.