Abdallah et al. (2026) Development and Field Validation of WaziSense, a Low-Cost Solar-Powered IoT Smart Tensiometer for Soil–Water Monitoring and Irrigation Scheduling in Semi-Arid Agriculture

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Sensors
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-08-24
• Authors: Hassine Ben Abdallah, Liliya Naui, Mourad Bakri, Felix Markwordt, Mohamed Abdur Rahim, Corentin Dupont, Mohamed Ali Ben Abdallah, Mourad Rezig
• DOI: 10.3390/s26175348

Research Groups

• OSIRRIS platform (specific institutions not mentioned in the text)

Short Summary

Development and field validation of WaziSense, a low-cost, solar-powered IoT smart tensiometer designed to optimize irrigation scheduling in semi-arid regions.

Objective

• To develop an affordable, open-source IoT soil-water monitoring system and validate its accuracy and forecasting capabilities for data-driven irrigation scheduling.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Three bioclimatic sites in Tunisia (Cherfech: durum wheat; Nabeul: citrus; Sbeitla: apple) with sensors installed at depths of 20 cm and 40 cm.
• Temporal Scale: Data logging every 15 min; forecasting horizon of 5 days.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Automated machine learning (AutoML) regression pipeline for forecasting soil-water dynamics.
• Data sources: WaziSense nodes (Watermark granular-matrix sensors and DS18B20 temperature probes), commercial 10HS capacitive probes with ZL6 data loggers (for validation), and open API weather forecasts.

Main Results

• Validation: Strong correlation between WaziSense and commercial 10HS probes ($r = 0.81$) and a very strong relationship between soil-water content and potential ($R^2 = 0.99$).
• Forecasting Performance: At the Sbeitla apple site (5-day horizon), the model achieved $R^2 = 0.73$, $\text{RMSE} = 0.35$, $\text{MAE} = 0.23$, and $\text{MPE} = 12.52\%$.
• Cost Efficiency: Material cost is under 90 EUR per node, which is one to two orders of magnitude lower than commercial monitoring stations.

Contributions

• Provides a fully open-source hardware and software stack (WaziGate, WaziApp) that significantly lowers the financial barrier to adopting high-resolution soil-moisture monitoring in water-limited agriculture.

Funding

• Not specified in the provided text.

Citation

@article{Abdallah2026Development,
  author = {Abdallah, Hassine Ben and Naui, Liliya and Bakri, Mourad and Markwordt, Felix and Rahim, Mohamed Abdur and Dupont, Corentin and Abdallah, Mohamed Ali Ben and Rezig, Mourad},
  title = {Development and Field Validation of WaziSense, a Low-Cost Solar-Powered IoT Smart Tensiometer for Soil–Water Monitoring and Irrigation Scheduling in Semi-Arid Agriculture},
  journal = {Sensors},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.3390/s26175348},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3390/s26175348}
}