A Review of the Applications of the Internet of Things (IoT) for Agricultural Automation

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of devices for communicating machine to machine (M2M) based on wired and wireless Internet. IoT in agriculture is a revolutionary technology that can be applied to agricultural production year-round. The aim of this study is to summarize cases of IoT being applied to agricultural automation in the agricultural sector and to discuss the limitations and prospects for expanding the application of IoT technology in Korea. The application of IoT in agriculture was classified and analyzed based on previous data, and the sensors and communication technologies used were compared. Based on the analysis results, the limitations of and prospects for IoT in agriculture were discussed. IoT was widely used in agriculture, such as management systems, monitoring systems, control systems, and unmanned machinery. In addition, the various wireless communication technologies used in agriculture, such as Wi-Fi, long-range wide area network (LoRaWAN), mobile communication (e.g., 2G, 3G, and 4G), ZigBee, and Bluetooth, were also used in IoT-based agriculture. With the development of various communication technologies, such as 5G, it is expected that faster and broader IoT technologies will be applied to various agricultural processes in the future. IoT-based agriculture equipped with a communication system suitable for each agricultural environment can contribute to agricultural automation by increasing crop quality and production and reducing labor.