An Autonomous Aquaponics System using 6LoWPAN based WSN

Aquaponics is a groundbreaking food production technique that combines both traditional methods of aquaculture and hydroponics to grow both fish and crops in a single integrated system. Aquaponics system uses fish wastes to provide essential nutrients to the plants. In return plants serve as a bio-filter for the fish in a symbiotic relationship. The purpose of this paper is to showcase how to build an efficient Internet of Things (IoT) application for aquaponics in order to create an autonomous, self-regulating system with the help of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). An open standard of WSN called 6LoWPAN is being used in this system which helps us to construct a global infrastructure. The designed aquaponic system is composed of sensor devices that can sense and collect information of the various dimensions of the water quality involved and store it in a cloud database. This means that the human intervention would be considerably less when compared to the traditional methods of aquaponics. In addition to the traditional technique, with the help of Next-Gen Telco technologies, i.e., using their high bandwidth and low latency, infected fishes are detected automatically on time and treat them to ensure the balance in our aquaponics ecosystem. In this paper we propose an end-to-end system to enable "Connected Aquaponics" which includes WSN and Next-Gen Telco to increase the crop yield and provide organic sustainable food to the world community.