The aim of the present paper is to review the technical and scientific state of the art of wireless sensor technologies and standards for wireless communications in the Agri-Food sector. These technologies are very promising in several fields such as environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, cold chain control or traceability. The paper focuses on WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks) and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), presenting the different systems available, recent developments and examples of applications, including ZigBee based WSN and passive, semi-passive and active RFID. Future trends of wireless communications in agriculture and food industry are also discussed.

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A Review of Wireless Sensor Technologies and Applications in Agriculture and Food Industry: State of the Art and Current Trends

Internet of Things (IoT)-based automation of agricultural events can change the agriculture sector from being static and manual to dynamic and smart, leading to enhanced production with reduced human efforts. Precision Agriculture (PA) along with Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) are the main drivers of automation in the agriculture domain. PA uses specific sensors and software to ensure that the crops receive exactly what they need to optimize productivity and sustainability. PA includes retrieving real data about the conditions of soil, crops and weather from the sensors deployed in the fields. High-resolution images of crops are obtained from satellite or air-borne platforms (manned or unmanned), which are further processed to extract information used to provide future decisions. In this paper, a review of near and remote sensor networks in the agriculture domain is presented along with several considerations and challenges. This survey includes wireless communication technologies, sensors, and wireless nodes used to assess the environmental behaviour, the platforms used to obtain spectral images of crops, the common vegetation indices used to analyse spectral images and applications of WSN in agriculture. As a proof of concept, we present a case study showing how WSN-based PA system can be implemented. We propose an IoT-based smart solution for crop health monitoring, which is comprised of two modules. The first module is a wireless sensor network-based system to monitor real-time crop health status. The second module uses a low altitude remote sensing platform to obtain multi-spectral imagery, which is further processed to classify healthy and unhealthy crops. We also highlight the results obtained using a case study and list the challenges and future directions based on our work.

https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/19/17/3796/pdf

Precision Agriculture Techniques and Practices: From Considerations to Applications.

Greenhouse cultivation has evolved from simple covered rows of open-fields crops to highly sophisticated controlled environment agriculture (CEA) facilities that projected the image of plant factories for urban agriculture The advances and improvements in CEA have promoted the scientific solutions for the efficient production of plants in populated cities and multi-story buildings Successful deployment of CEA for urban agriculture requires many components and subsystems, as well as the understanding of the external influencing factors that should be systematically considered and integrated This review is an attempt to highlight some of the most recent advances in greenhouse technology and CEA in order to raise the awareness for technology transfer and adaptation, which is necessary for a successful transition to urban agriculture This study reviewed several aspects of a high-tech CEA system including improvements in the frame and covering materials, environment perception and data sharing, and advanced microclimate control and energy optimization models This research highlighted urban agriculture and its derivatives, including vertical farming, rooftop greenhouses and plant factories which are the extensions of CEA and have emerged as a response to the growing population, environmental degradation, and urbanization that are threatening food security Finally, several opportunities and challenges have been identified in implementing the integrated CEA and vertical farming for urban agriculture
Keywords: smart agriculture, greenhouse modelling, urban agriculture, vertical farming, automation, internet of things (IoT), wireless sensor network, plant factories
DOI: 1025165/jijabe201811013210

Citation: Shamshiri R R, Kalantari F, Ting K C, Thorp K R, Hameed I A, Weltzien C, et al Advances in greenhouse automation and controlled environment agriculture: A transition to plant factories and urban agriculture Int J Agric & Biol Eng, 2018; 11(1): 1–22

/pdf/advances-in-greenhouse-automation-and-controlled-environment-59medfgp0f.pdf

Advances in greenhouse automation and controlled environment agriculture: A transition to plant factories and urban agriculture

http://oa.upm.es/9245/1/2010_sensor_for_product_characterization_Ruiz_altisent.pdf

Review: Sensors for product characterization and quality of specialty crops-A review

In last two decades, various monitoring systems have been designed and deployed in urban environments, toward the realization of the so called smart cities. Such systems are based on both dedicated sensor nodes, and ubiquitous but not dedicated devices such as smart phones and vehicles’ sensors. When we design sensor network monitoring systems for smart cities, we have two essential problems: node deployment and sensing management. These design problems are challenging, due to large urban areas to monitor, constrained locations for deployments, and heterogeneous type of sensing devices. There is a vast body of literature from different disciplines that have addressed these challenges. However, we do not have yet a comprehensive understanding and sound design guidelines. This paper addresses such a research gap and provides an overview of the theoretical problems we face, and what possible approaches we may use to solve these problems. Specifically, this paper focuses on the problems on both the deployment of the devices (which is the system design/configuration part) and the sensing management of the devices (which is the system running part). We also discuss how to choose the existing algorithms in different type of monitoring applications in smart cities, such as structural health monitoring, water pipeline networks, traffic monitoring. We finally discuss future research opportunities and open challenges for smart city monitoring.

/pdf/the-sensable-city-a-survey-on-the-deployment-and-management-5g5yno5we6.pdf

The Sensable City: A Survey on the Deployment and Management for Smart City Monitoring

The wireless sensor network (WSN) is one of the most significant technologies in the 21st century. As an open and global standard for WSN, ZigBee shows advantages on low-cost, low power consumption and self-forming. The current researches of ZigBee wireless sensor network on industrial automation, electronic products, smart buildings and medical care were presented and, as an explorative application of ZigBee wireless sensor network in protected agriculture overcoming the limits of wire connection, its applied design for greenhouse management was proposed by introducing both the hardware and software architectures. The node power consumption was also discussed. Finally, the architecture of ZigBee-based mesh network greenhouse management was indicated.

A Design of Greenhouse Monitoring & Control System Based on ZigBee Wireless Sensor Network

With large-scale,intensive and modern development of livestock farming industry,the cultivation environment has become a prominent problem.Wastes produced from livestock farm have not only drawn adverse effects on animals themselves,but also led serious threat on environment.The present article summarizes ammonia pollution problem released from livestock farm,analyzes both domestic and foreign state-of-the-art of measurements of ammonia,and discusses development tendency in future.

Zhou Yi-ming

Papers

A Design of Greenhouse Monitoring & Control System Based on ZigBee Wireless Sensor Network

Monitoring Procedures of Ammonia Released from Livestock Farm