Irrigation subsystem and method for locating a decoder unit in an irrigation system

#The present application is a national stage entry of International Patent Application No. PCT/HU2021/050008, filed on Feb. 4, 2021, which claims priority to Hungarian Patent Application No. P2000345, filed on Oct. 19, 2020.

#Not applicable.

#Not applicable.

#The invention will now be described in connection with preferable embodiments thereof in which reference will be made to the accompanying drawings. In the drawing:

#FIG. 1 shows the general layout of a known irrigations system with a central irrigation controller in which the invention can be used;

#FIG. 2 shows the schematic block diagram of an irrigation station of the system shown in FIG. 1;

#Reference is made to FIG. 1 which is the schematic layout of a prior art irrigation system 1 controlled by a central irrigation controller 10. The system 1 shown can be complemented by the blocks required for practicing the present invention. The system 1 is adapted to irrigate a large area in the field away from the irrigation controller 10, and can have several branches B1, B2, . . . Bk along which respective groups of units U1 . . . Un are deployed, in which n>k. Each unit Ui comprises functional elements shown separately in FIG. 2 which has a decoder unit 25 as main part and at least one sprinkler 13. A plurality of the sprinklers 13 (which is the most typical case) are arranged in each unit, and the required water supply of the sprinklers 13 is provided through water pipe 15 through a controlled valve 16 operated by a solenoid 23 and controlled by the decoder unit 25 (FIG. 2).

#A communication channel is provided between the respective units Ui and the irrigation controller 10. While the communication can be provided through wireless channels, the use of cabled connection is the most widely applied way of communication, in which wires 14 supplying electric power to the units are also utilized by superimposed pulse modulation as means of communication.

#In the system 1 the irrigation controller 10 can set each unit into operation or terminate operation by sending a coded message including the individual addresses of the selected unit, and decoder 21 in the unit recognizes its address and carries out the command that uses its address, i.e. opens or closes the associated valve 16, whereby the sprinklers 13 in the unit start or stop irrigation. Naturally, the start and stop times are determined in groups, therefore the irrigation controller 10 mostly addresses all decoders in a target group and starts and stops irrigation simultaneously in the whole group.