Design and implementation of a distributed

IoT system for the monitoring of water quality in

aquaculture
Cesar Encinas∗ , Erica Ruiz† , Joaquin Cortez‡ and Adolfo Espinoza§
Dept. Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Instituto Tecnologico de Sonora
Cd. Obregon, Sonora, Mexico
Email: ∗ cesar rer@hotmail.com, † erica.ruiz@itson.edu.mx, ‡ joaquin.cortez@itson.edu.mx, § adolfo.espinoza@itson.edu.mx

Abstract—In this work we present the prototype and proof countries and companies of software showed great interest [2].
of concept of a distributed monitoring system of the most
important variables in aquaculture water quality. This is of great Thanks to the development and improvement of electronics,
importance because aquaculture is a lagging area of technology
compared to other areas such as agriculture. So it is important microelectronics, digital systems, microcontrollers,
to solve the problems that are in this area with the support of telecommunications and information technologies, it can
technology. Among the problems is the slow response time in be seen the fast development of information systems and
the care of water quality, the waste of resources and losses. The mobile applications for the control and supervision [3]. In this
system proposed in this work monitors the water quality based era of mobile technology and the interconnectivity of devices,
on wireless sensor networks and on the Internet of Things (IoT).
This information is important for the development of this area, the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) is born, which
since it allows sharing the different conditions in the breeding of consists of having interconnectivity and communication with
aquatic organisms between different breeders and organizations. objects. This provides a smart service, this by the combination
This information is useful to know the conditions in which there of Internet and a network of sensors. In simple terms, it is an
is a better development of a product, worse development, what interdisciplinary piece of research that gets not only people
conditions can mean a possible disaster in the environment and
how to optimize resources for the care of the pond. but also connected objects [4].

Keywords—Internet of Things, Wireless Sensor Networks, Aquaculture pond monitoring procedures are currently
Aquaculture, Mobile & Cloud Computing, Global Wireless inefficient; according to the experience of breeders this
Services, Business & Applications. consumes a lot of time and costs in terms of human
resources. The measurement of conditions is usually only
I. I NTRODUCTION done when the aquaculture has discovered an abnormal
condition in the water or there is a drastic change in
Aquaculture consists of the set of activities, knowledge and environmental factors. When the phenomenon occurs, the
techniques for the breeding of aquatic plants and some species process to stabilize the system is usually very expensive
of animals. This activity has a great importance in economic and very complex. This causes environmental factors to be
development and food production. Continuous monitoring monitored inefficiently [5]. Among the main problems in
of the physical, chemical and biological parameters of pond aquaculture are the presence of diseases, uncertainty in water
water helps not only to predict and control the negative quality, high costs of operation and waste.
conditions of aquaculture, but also to avoid environmental
damage and the collapse of the production process. The The aim of this work is design and implements a distributed
monitoring of physical and chemical variables such as: system for aquaculture water quality care through remote
oxygen, temperature and pH in water are vital to maintain monitoring of dissolved oxygen, pH and temperature. This
adequate conditions and avoid undesirable situations that may work will contribute remote monitoring distributed system
lead to the collapse of aquaculture systems [1]. through what is known as the Internet of Things to monitoring
water quality in ponds. The system is modular, portable, low
Among the technologies that can support this problem cost, versatile and allows sharing information through the
in aquaculture are the wireless sensors networks composed cloud that can be used for the development and improvement
of a large number of self-organized sensors deployed in of aquaculture activities.
a monitoring region that perceive, collect, transmit and
process information from supervised objects from the area The application of this technology in aquaculture will
covered in a coordinated manner. These networks have provide the following benefits [6]:
a very important commercial value, with the continuous 1. Production close to market demand.
development of wireless sensors networks, more and more 2. Improved environmental control.

978-1-5090-3599-1/17/$31.00 2017 IEEE

3. Reduction of damage caused by major disasters. The author ShaoHue Hu performed a work which is entitled
4. Reduction of environmental management costs. Dynamic Monitoring Based on Wireless Sensor Networks of
5. Reduction of production costs. IoT [7]. This was published in 2015. The paper consists of a
6. Improves the quality of aquatic products. system that combines the Internet of Things with aquaculture
monitoring systems showing an algorithm for the sampling
The system can be implemented in aquaculture farms of information sensed in aquaculture and optimize the energy
to be able to monitor in real time the most important consumption in the networks of Sensors. An algorithm is
physical-chemical variables of the water. With this having implemented by simulation to save energy when sampling the
a faster response with respect to what actions to take when parameters of the ponds. It is proposed as future work that
conditions arise in the water quality of the ponds. Some other it is necessary to update the algorithms for a greater number
applications where water quality is important are: of variables to be measured, to obtain a correlation between
temperature and humidity; this means more information
• Irrigation in agriculture: it is a very important factor when about the environment and allows performing an analysis
making decisions about the choice of irrigation system, of patterns and characteristics using machine learning
determination of the components of the installation and techniques. Another future work is optimizing the sampling
of the irrigation and crop management itself in order to save energy. As a result, energy consumption is reduced.
to avoid problems of salinity, water infiltration In soil, This concludes that reducing the number of samples can
of toxicity to plants or other derivatives of the seals in save energy. The benefits in this energy saving consist in the
localized irrigation systems. reduction of costs and the optimization of the monitoring
processes.
• Industrial use: Water quality allows production operations
to be optimized, to have a better product if it contains In the work Automated Monitoring and Control System
water or simply to keep piping and containers in good for Shrimp Farms Based on Embedded System and Wireless
condition. Sensor Network [8] published by Nguyen et al. [8] in 2015,
a low-cost, versatile and prototype system is developed to
• Human consumption: Water is a source of life and health. elaborate a commercial product in aquaculture. A distributed
Water is indispensable for life. Its quality is intimately system was implemented using ZigBee, GSM, Cloud,
related to the standard of living and the sanitary level of MSP430 and LabVIEW technologies. This system monitors
a country. three variables which are pH, Oxygen and Temperature in
two shrimp farms. It is concluded that the implemented
• Ambient water: Identify water bodies in need of system is scalable, intuitive and low cost. We recomend to
improvement, evaluate the effectiveness of pollution add more sensors to obtain more information on the state
abatement plans as well as provide scientific data for of the water quality and to be able to carry out a more
making planning decisions. complete analysis and give more reliability to the system
through validation with commercial measurement instruments.
In this paper we present several sections as a first step an
The Research on Wireless Sensor Network in Aquaculture
introduction to be in context with the subject of aquaculture,
[9] contributes to an intelligent system based on wireless
what problems exist in this area, how to solve them and
sensor networks for monitoring. It implements an architecture
the benefits. The state of the art where we present several
using different types of sensors in a node known as sensing
works about aquaculture systems and what are the niches of
node, this node communicates through the ZigBee protocol
opportunity in this area and which of these will be treated in
to a Sink. In this part the information is taken to a server
this work. The section of Method we present the architecture
which uploads the information to the cloud and is requested
of the system and a brief explanation of the software and
by a computer by the user. This system has a manual control
hardware. Experimental Results shows the functionality, some
system and a smart control system. The system resulted in
images and the results obtained using the system. Conclusion
measurements with errors less than 0.3. In conclusion, an
we comment about this work. Future work we propose the
adequate monitoring and control system for the monitoring
next stages for this work and present the benefits.
and control of aquaculture water quality was implemented.
As future work is planned to apply this type of systems in
the field and industry to validate their functionality in the
II. S TATE OF THE ART
wild and verify their robustness and reliability.
We investigated related works in the subject to identify
the most important points in the area and the niches of A monitoring system for water quality in aquaculture
opportunity that are in the state of the art of this type of ponds is mentioned in the publication A Mobile Platform for
systems. Remote Monitoring of Water Quality on Live Fish Transport
Containers: Lessons Learned [10]. The contribution is a
mobile sensor platform for monitoring ponds. This system IoT to the system, so that other devices that can control the
consists of the following architecture. It has the sensing environment and not only monitoring it. In addition to a better
node of each pond connected to a sink; this sink sends the storage of the information a server is used and the sharing
information to a mobile application to have a visualization of this information to allow other experts and organization
of the data in real time. This information is transmitted via realize an analysis of the data.
GSM / 3G to the Internet, it can be monitored remotely and
the information is stored in a database. In the results the The paper Design and deployment of wireless sensor
data of the ponds were shown remotely and the measures networks for aquaculture monitoring and control based on
were corroborated by the transport staff. In conclusion, virtual instruments [14] presents a system based on sensor
the monitoring platform showed excellent performance and networks for real time monitoring in aquaculture. The system
precision in the test phase. In future works it is proposed to consists of nodes that sense the ph, temperature and dissolved
integrate artificial intelligence into the system to optimize oxygen in the water. These sensing nodes send the information
and improve its functionality. This allows the system to be to a coordinator and this sends the information to a computer
able to optimize resources using machine learning to analyze to be visualized. This system effectively reduces the high
organisms and water conditions, in order to have an efficient risk of organism mortality through constant monitoring of the
control. most critical parameters in the enviroment.

The system that was implemented in a research project Development of Embedded Wireless Network and Water
in 2014 entitled Remote fish aquaculture monitoring system Quality Measurement Systems for Aquaculture [15] this work
based on wireless transmission technology [11] contributes presents the development and implementation of a system for
with an autonomous remote monitoring system in real the monitoring of water quality in ponds, which consists of
time for aquaculture. This system consists of a surveillance floats that have a system for sensing and transmitting values
network combined with mobile devices and a remote platform of pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen and conductivity. This
to collect real-time information on aquaculture farms. The information is uploaded to the Internet and is displayed in a
system architecture is based on a wireless sensor network with desktop application in Labview. However, it does not mention
the ZigBee protocol which communicates with a coordinator the use of a database for the storage of information or a
and this information to a server. This server uploads the mobile application.
information to the internet and in this way is requested from
the mobile devices. The system records the values of the Compared with some of the mentioned works, this
measured variables with time and date. This system presents work has the integrated and mobile detection node which
different measurement and monitoring systems to optimize allows the system to be changed to different ponds. They
resources and reduce costs. In future works it is proposed to have different mobile and desktop applications since the
use other technologies to improve the system. software of this system displays information, stores it in
a database and uploads it to the cloud. In addition to the
The paper Application Effect of Aquaculture IOT System development of this prototype, it is designed to integrate
[12] addresses a Monitoring System for water quality as artificial intelligence to control the water quality of ponds
the IoT systems. An experiment is carried out on farms and to analyze the data. This work in contrast to others,
where IoT systems are used and the costs and resources in takes the information to carry out a more specific analysis
which they do not use are compared. As results the costs of the cases that occur in the aquaculture due to the use of
between farms where systems are used is reduced between Internet of the Things. These include optimum development
19.34%, 6.03%, 3.98%. In conclusion IoT-based systems in of aquatic organisms, optimization of resources and exchange
aquaculture provide economic benefits in this area. of information with other organizations. All this is of
great importance for aquaculturists and organizations, as
A research titled Wireless Sensor Network System this provides optimization of resources, efficient processes,
Design using Raspberry Pi and Arduino for Environmental reduction in costs of production and products of better quality.
Monitoring Applications [13] shows how wireless sensor
networks are an important technology to innovate in different
applications. Mainly this research focuses on a monitoring III. M ETHOD
system based on Raspberry Pi and Arduino for monitoring
environments. The architecture consists of sensing nodes This section consists of three subsections which are the
through a WSN using the ZigBee protocol. These nodes are architecture of the system where the technologies required
coordinated in a base station which sends the information by for the development of the system are presented, the
an application to a database and to a web server. Subsequently hardware design showing the devices that were used for the
the information is uploaded to the internet through a router implementation and finally the software design which consists
where it can be deployed in devices such as cell phones of a description of the functionality.
and computers. An improvement to this work would be add
A. System architecture technologies are shown in figure 2.
This system uses different technologies, among these
Arduino module, Sensors, database, Web Services, mobile
application and Desktop application. Figure 1 shows the data
flow and the three general blocks of the system: Sensors,
Connectivity and Deployment.

Fig. 2. System architecture

Deployment: Desktop applications and mobile application.

Fig. 1. System general blocks and data flow.
The information flow of the system consists of taking
Sensors: In this section three sensors are used which are information from the critical variables of the pond from the
an analog temperature sensor, Atlas Ph Probe digital sensor temperature, oxygen and pH sensors. Previously these sensors
and Atlas Dissolved Oxygen Probe.The sensors transmit their were calibrated according to their specifications plus each
information via UART (Universal Asynchronous Transmitter- one has its integrated circuit that provides the characterization
Receiver) Each of these sensors is submerged in the pond of each sensor, in this way it has that the measured data are
where the measurement is taken. reliable.

Connectivity: Sensing information is transmitted via The Arduino module coordinates the time in which the
the Zigbee protocol. Zigbee protocol uses IEEE802.15.4 information of each sensor is taken and how it is transmitted
specification as the medium access layer (MAC) and Physical to the Xbee module. This coordination consists of control
Layer (PHY). Zigbee works in 2.4 GHz frequency band. The signals for a multiplexer. This multiplexer has as input the
data transfer rate for ZigBee standard is 10-250kbps and data as UART for each of the different sensors and as output
the transmission distance 300 feet to 1 mile. The maximum the Xbee module. This information is transmitted by the Xbee
length of data packets for IEEE802.15.4 MAC is 127 bytes. module transmiter of the measurement node to another Xbee
module receiver that is connected in a computer, through the
The Arduino module is used as the communication serial port Communicates with the data reading application.
coordinator. The sensing node sends the information through The application stores the information in a database and
a Xbee transmitter module to the computer where it is received uploads the information to the cloud through a web service.
by the receiver Xbee module, through serial communication The mobile application asks the web service for the data to
this data is read by an application developed in C sharp. be displayed.

The data in the application is deployed, stored in a

local database in MySQL and sent to a web service where B. Hardware design
it is available in the cloud. This web service consist in In the hardware development a 22x14x9 cm plastic
SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) a lightweight cabinet is used. In this cabinet are placed 3 rechargeable 9v
protocol intended for exchanging structured information in batteries, Arduino One, Xbee Serie 1, multiplexer, pH sensor,
a decentralized, distributed environment. SOAP uses XML temperature sensor and dissolved oxygen sensor. Figure 3
technologies to define an extensible messaging framework, shows the diagram of the hardware in the cabinet.
which provides a message construct that can be exchanged
over a variety of underlying protocols. The framework This diagram shows the different general components of the
has been designed to be independent of any particular system. Starting with the power supply which is responsible
programming model and other implementation specific for supplying power to all the electronic devices in this node.
semantics. The system architecture and the different wireless
 The arduino one serves as a coordinator, it has two control
signals to select which sensor will transmit its information
through the Xbee module. Each sensor has its integrated
circuit which adjusts the information and transmits it via
UART to the multiplexer.

Fig. 4. Software flowchart.

and the information was requested from an external network B.

Fig. 3. Hardware diagram.

Figure 5 shows the implemented system. There is the box

C. Software design with its three sensors, the electronic devices and the ignition
The desktop application was developed in Visual Studio switch. This box is placed near the pond to which it will be
2015 in the C sharp language. It was developed to read the measured its water quality and the three sensors are immersed
serial port of the computer and to enable communication with in said pond.
the hardware. At this point the information is upload to a web
service using the SOAP protocol, this was generated on the
same platform as the deskop application Visual Studio 2015.
The mobile application was developed in Android studio for
devices that have an operating system higher than Android
4.0.3 or equivalent.

Figure 4 shows the flowchart of the software. This flow

diagram consists of the moment of opening the application
is requested to open a port which consists of the Xbee
module that will communicate with the sensing node. To
enable the port it must be available and the baud rate must
be set. Immediately a measurement request is sent and a
counter is started which serves to give time to each sensor
to measure and to coordinate the requests for information.
Subsequently the information is updated in the application
where it is store in a database and then uploaded to a web
service and it updates the information on the server. To
finalize the information is available in the server and this can
be requested through the applications of data deployment.

Fig. 5. Hardware implemented.

IV. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
The proposed system was successfully developed using This system lasts approximately 8 hours using rechargeable
the proposed hardware, software and architecture. The data batteries of 200mA / h. This is sufficient for proof of concept
is transmitted regularly, without errors and with a very of this prototype.
small latency. The system was tested using the system in a
local network A in which the computer is connected and Figure 6 shows the application taking data read. This
is the place where the cabinet with the sensors is located application consists of opening the Xbee module port that is
connected to the computer. The 15 seconds counter is used to V. C ONCLUSION
take the measurements every 5 seconds. A request is sent to a This work presents the implementation of a prototype and a
sensor to take the measurement and when the request of each proof of concept about a remote monitoring system applying
sensor is sent, the sensed information is sent to the application. the concept of IoT among others technologies addressed
to aquaculture water quality. This system is low cost, low
power consumption, scalable, versatile, distributed, mobile
and accurate. This prototype is still under development, in
the next section of future work the stage of the system is
mentioned in detail and it is still to be implemented.

VI. F UTURE W ORK

As future work different stages are proposed, in figure 8 a
general diagram of the system is shown.

Fig. 6. Desktop application.

In this same application the information is store in a

database and then is uploaded to web service. This service
updates the server where it can then be requested by the
mobile application which is shown in figure 7, where
dissolved oxygen, pH and temperature are displayed.

Fig. 8. Future work chart.

The AI module will be developed in python. The module

will take the information of the database to infer when to
send alarms on the conditions or events important for the
care of the ponds. Currently the module is proposed to work
with fuzzy logic.

This work will be limited to the development of the

prototype for a network of 3 nodes where the artificial
intelligence module will have the purpose of detecting events
in the water of the ponds or unwanted conditions, in this way
the system will notify the user. This will bring the following
benefits:
1. Process optimization.
2. Optimization of resources.
3. Features for a better product.
4. Prevention of unwanted conditions.
5. Reduction of losses.

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