Applicability of Wireless Sensor Networks in Precision Agriculture: A Review

Abstract

Presently, wireless sensor network (WSN) plays important role in engineering, science, agriculture and many other field like surveillance, military applications, smart cars etc. Precision agriculture (PA) is one of the field in which WSN is widely adopted. The aim of the adoption of WSNs in PA is to measure the different environmental parameters such as humidity, temperature, soil moisture, PH value of soil etc., for enhancing the quantity and quality of crops. Further, the WSNs are also helped to reduce the consumptions of the natural resources used in farming. Hence, the aim of this review is to identify the various WSNs technologies adopted for precision agriculture and impact of these technologies to achieve smart agriculture. This review also focuses on the different environmental parameters like irrigation, monitoring, soil properties, temperature for achieving precision agriculture. Further, a detailed study is also carried out on different crops which are covered using WSNs technologies. This review also highlights on the different communication technologies and sensors available for PA. To analyze the impact of the WSNs in agriculture field, several research questions are designed and through this review, we are tried to find the solutions of these research questions.