Essay: IoT (Internet of Things) and agriculture

The IoT has already been used to set pace in agriculture by Savale et al. [4] as they designed a WSN for precision agriculture. According to the authors the system is applicable to both farms and greenhouses. The architecture consists of a central system, control cabinet and sensor nodes. The central system is composed of a communication server, database, and web server. The sensor nodes pick up data which are transmitted to the central system via the control cabinet. The control cabinet provides access to the sensor nodes. The control cabinet is also connected to a gateway that provides the farmer with data. An agronomist is alerted by the central system in case an abnormal event occurs. The system does not provide real time monitoring as the agronomist is only alerted upon an abnormal event. Keshtgari and Deljoo [2] designed a WSN solution for precision agriculture based on ZigBee technology. The system employs sensor nodes deployed in the farm and using ZigBee radios to transmit data to a gateway that is connected to a remote server. The WSN uses grid topology having the gateway as the sink node at the centre of the grid. The sink node transmits data to a BS every 15 minutes. The time interval of 15 minutes for transmission of data to the BS means there is no real time updating of information regarding the farm conditions. A WSN for greenhouse parameter control was designed and tested by Chaudhary et al. [1]. They tested the system in a 35m by 200m greenhouse with four types of sensors to monitor climates outside and inside the greenhouse, soil conditions being moisture, temperature, pH and electric conductivity and the last sensor type monitoring greenhouse environment. The greenhouse has actuators for regulation of humidity, air temperature, irrigation and daylight. A precision farming (PF) solution based on WSN in Egypt was proposed by Abd El-kader et al. [5]. The prototype was designed to monitor soil parameters in a potato field. In testing the prototype, the authors evenly distributed the sensor nodes throughout a potato field. The sensor nodes consist of sensors for temperature, humidity, light intensity, soil pH, and soil moisture. The node is completed by attaching the sensors to MDA300 DAQ board and a MICAz radio platform. The WSN uses Periodic Threashold-sensitive Energy-Efficient sensor Network (APTEEN) routing protocol. The sensor node clusters are connected to the Internet or cellular network to allow for remote monitoring. Since the WSN was designed only monitoring a potato field, it may not be applicable to other crops. Kassim et al. [3] designed a novel Intelligent Greenhouse Management System (IGMS) based on a WSN. The IGMS has temperature, humidity and moisture sensors. The system allows for remote monitoring as the data is transmitted to a server. The system can control actuators that perform certain tasks in the greenhouse like automated irrigation. The proposed WSN provides monitoring of only three parameters which is not satisfactory for large scale production. Roham et al. [6] developed a greenhouse monitoring system using a WSN. They monitor the conditions of carbon dioxide, temperature, and humidity. ZigBee sensing nodes are deployed in the greenhouse to take the measurements. The system relies on ZigBee routers and gateway for gathering data. The gateway sends data to a BeagleBone board which is connected to the Internet to transmit data to a database. The system monitors only three parameters which are not enough to ensure a highly productive farm. A WSN was designed and implemented by Shen et al. [7] for livestock house environmental perception monitoring. The WSN architecture comprises of sensor nodes deployed in livestock houses, routing nodes for collecting data from the sensor nodes and the central node that relays data to a server. The sensor nodes have sensors for temperature, illumination, ammonia gas, sulphuretted hydrogen, humidity and carbon dioxide. The sensor nodes and routing nodes are based on ZigBee standard. The WSN uses GPRS for data communications with the server. Because of the use of only GPRS for data communications, the WSN system will not be able to upload data to the server hence limiting remote monitoring.