Role of IoT Technology in Agriculture: A Systematic Literature Review

Muhammad Shoaib Farooq,Shamyla Riaz,Adnan Abid,Tariq Umer,Yousaf Bin Zikria

doi:10.3390/electronics9020319

Muhammad Shoaib Farooq, Shamyla Riaz + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9020319

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Abstract

The growing demand for food in terms of quality and quantity has increased the need for industrialization and intensification in the agriculture field. Internet of Things (IoT) is a highly promising technology that is offering many innovative solutions to modernize the agriculture sector. Research institutions and scientific groups are continuously working to deliver solutions and products using IoT to address different domains of agriculture. This paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) by conducting a survey of IoT technologies and their current utilization in different application domains of the agriculture sector. The underlying SLR has been compiled by reviewing research articles published in well-reputed venues between 2006 and 2019. A total of 67 papers were carefully selected through a systematic process and classified accordingly. The primary objective of this systematic study is the collection of all relevant research on IoT agricultural applications, sensors/devices, communication protocols, and network types. Furthermore, it also discusses the main issues and challenges that are being investigated in the field of agriculture. Moreover, an IoT agriculture framework has been presented that contextualizes the representation of a wide range of current solutions in the field of agriculture. Similarly, country policies for IoT-based agriculture have also been presented. Lastly, open issues and challenges have been presented to provide the researchers promising future directions in the domain of IoT agriculture.

Highlights

The widespread of the internet from the last two decades has brought unlimited benefits for organizations and citizens over the globe
According to the statistics of the search engines, we have found most of the research papers related to Internet of Things (IoT) agriculture in these electronics libraries
The mapping results have been considered regarding the IoT domain, and the validity of the results presented in this paper concerns only the IoT agriculture domain

Summary

Introduction

The widespread of the internet from the last two decades has brought unlimited benefits for organizations and citizens over the globe. Internet of Things (IoT) is promising to provide the same benefit through its innovative technologies and giving a way to enhance the user’s perception and ability by modifying the working environment. Researchers have proposed different IoT-based technologies in the agriculture field that are increasing the production with less workforce effort. IoT-based agriculture projects to improve the quality and increase agricultural productivity. By using GPS technology and ZigBee protocol a WSN-based system has been proposed that monitors different agricultural parameters [9]. A real-time rice crop monitoring system has been designed to increase the productivity [10]. A low-cost Bluetooth-based system has been proposed in [12] for monitoring various agricultural variables such as temperature by using a microcontroller that works as a weather station

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