AN INTELLIGENT APPROACH TO MONITORING AN AGRICULTURAL GREENHOUSE VIA A 4G NETWORK IN THE REPUBLIC OF CONGO

This article presents a contribution to management approaches aimed at modernizing the agricultural sector in Republic of Congo by setting up an automatic control and regulation system for an agricultural greenhouse. This system will enable farmers, via a mobile phone network, to effectively control their greenhouses in order to ensure excellent quantitative and qualitative production on the one hand, and to reduce operating costs via automatic control on the other. In order to achieve this, the first step was to set up a network of intelligent sensors located at certain points in the greenhouse, enabling the state of the climatic parameters in the greenhouse to be monitored in real time. Everything can be monitored from a data center. The second stage consisted in programming an IoT Cloud platform which, via the Internet, can be used to obtain the values of climatic parameters in real time and record them in a database, configure the controller’s set points and intervene manually and/or automatically on the greenhouse’s actuators. A WhatsApp notification system is used to notify when action needs to be taken. A prototype agricultural greenhouse is being built to test the performance and facilitate the operation of this system. Received: August 21, 2023 Accepted: October 3, 2023