Internet of Things in Precision Agriculture: A Survey on Sensing Mechanisms, Potential Applications, and Challenges

Abstract

Precision agriculture is one of the modern farming practices that gathers, processes, and analyzes data with the goal of increasing the agricultural production and reducing the usage of resources. Agriculture contributes an important share in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of our country. Precision agriculture involves the usage of Internet of Things (IoT) along with Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which provides an intelligent farm management system. IoT in agriculture provides decision support systems that help farmers to know the real-time information of their field. The applications of IoT becomes a game changer in agriculture as it monitors and transfers information without human intervention. Agricultural IoT systems are implemented with the help of sensors and actuators that senses and responds to different inputs and provides instant feedbacks. The key sensors involved in precision agriculture are used in both small and large-scale farmlands for effective production. The main objective of this study is to review the potential application of sensors used in agriculture, to describe the layers of IoT in agriculture, discuss the existing sensing approaches for monitoring the agricultural parameters effectively, and deliver the general challenges encountered while implementing IoT systems.