A Low-Cost Platform for Environmental Smart Farming Monitoring System Based on IoT and UAVs

Faris A. Almalki, Ben Othman Soufiene, Saeed H. Alsamhi and Hedi Sakli
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Faris A. Almalki: Department of Computer Engineering, College of Computers, and Information Technology, Taif University, Taif 21944, Saudi Arabia
Ben Othman Soufiene: PRINCE Laboratory Research, ISITcom, Hammam Sousse, University of Sousse, Sousse 4023, Tunisia
Saeed H. Alsamhi: Software Research Institute, Athlone Institute of Technology, N37 HD68 Athlone, Ireland
Hedi Sakli: MACS Research Laboratory, National Engineering School of Gabes, Gabes University, Gabes 6029, Tunisia

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 11, 1-26

Abstract: When integrating the Internet of Things (IoT) with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) occurred, tens of applications including smart agriculture have emerged to offer innovative solutions to modernize the farming sector. This paper aims to present a low-cost platform for comprehensive environmental parameter monitoring using flying IoT. This platform is deployed and tested in a real scenario on a farm in Medenine, Tunisia, in the period of March 2020 to March 2021. The experimental work fulfills the requirements of automated and real-time monitoring of the environmental parameters using both under- and aboveground sensors. These IoT sensors are on a farm collecting vast amounts of environmental data, where it is sent to ground gateways every 1 h, after which the obtained data is collected and transmitted by a drone to the cloud for storage and analysis every 12 h. This low-cost platform can help farmers, governmental, or manufacturers to predict environmental data over the geographically large farm field, which leads to enhancement in crop productivity and farm management in a cost-effective, and timely manner. Obtained experimental results infer that automated and human-made sets of actions can be applied and/or suggested, due to the innovative integration between IoT sensors with the drone. These smart actions help in precision agriculture, which, in turn, intensely boost crop productivity, saving natural resources.

Keywords: Internet of Things; Unmanned Aerial Vehicles; smart farming; environmental parameters; LoRa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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