Francisco Falcone Lanas

The award-winning article, written in collaboration with the University of Vigo and the Abdelmalek Essaadi University of Morocco, puts forward a model designed to optimise a wireless sensor network system in smart agriculture. The aim is that it should not be affected by interference and should offer a greater capacity for obtaining environmental data, controlling water resources or measuring the level of chemical components of the land.

Francisco Falcone-Lanas, researcher at the Institute of Smart Cities (ISC) of the Public University of Navarre (NUP/UPNA) and lecturer in the university’s Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, has obtained an award for best paper submitted at the 4th International Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications, ECSA-4.

“The features of these types of wireless sensor networks in smart agricultural environments directly depend not only on the environment –crop types, land, etc.– but also on the actual design of the communications transceivers, in other words, the devices that have a transmitter and a receiver,” explained Francisco Falcone with respect to the award-winning article. “Through the detailed study of the radio channel, which is the means by which the signals that allow the sensor network to function are transmitted, it is possible to obtain the characteristics of the way the said network is functioning. This makes it possible to optimise the behaviour of the system in terms of minimizing interference and increasing its capacity.”

The 4th International Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications was held online and was organised by a group of researchers with the support of the Swiss scientific publisher MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute) and the specialised journal “Sensors”.