Smart Agriculture PDF
Smart Agriculture PDF
Smart Agriculture PDF
http://www.scirp.org/journal/ait
ISSN Online: 2161-6825
ISSN Print: 2161-6817
Nianpu Li1*, Yimeng Xiao2, Lei Shen3, Zhuoyue Xu4, Botao Li5, Chongxuan Yin6
1
Beijing No. 80 High School, Beijing, China
2
Tianjin Polytechnic University, Tianjin, China
3
Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA
4
Pace University, New York, USA
5
Boston University, Boston, USA
6
The State University of New York at Stony Brook, Long Island, USA
1. Introduction
1.1. Background
The term Internet of Things, or IoT, was first mentioned by Kevin Ashton in
1999, in his effort to explain how radio frequency identification (RFID) could
be incorporated into the Internet. According to the International Telecommu-
nication Union (ITU), the Internet of Things has been defined as “a global infra-
structure for the information society, enabling advanced services by intercon-
necting (physical and virtual) things based on existing and evolving interopera-
1.2. Objective
In this paper, our objective is to develop a greenhouse with an IoT system to
serve as a one-stop shop to supply local communities’ demands to production.
The IoT system helps to achieve the purpose in the following ways:
1.2.3. Supervision
The IoT system constantly monitors the greenhouse from the data collected by a
variety of sensors. If unusual changes take place in the plants or the devices, the
IoT system immediately sends alerts to the users via the mobile application.
Once emergencies are notified, users are able to access detailed reports.
Comparing to traditional greenhouses, the IoT-based hydroponic greenhouse
grows a diversity of plants at the same time to fulfill the basic needs of a specific
local community (see Figure 1), which are forecasted by the cloud’s analyzing
of historical market data. Most importantly, the IoT system uses machines’ deci-
sion-making and precise actuating to replace human labor in greenhouse pro-
duction.
Figure 3. Bubbleponics.
using 2.5 G. Cloud server has strong computing power to help the customer
make a market decision, and scheduling by using a machine learning algorithm.
After computing, the data will both send to the local server and user interface.
Local server will send data to actuators, and the user interface will receive data to
inform users. Overall those functions and devices, IoT system makes the green-
house become automated.
2.2. Sensors
The five types of sensors are employed in the sensor network. The humidity and
temperature sensors, light sensors, and CO2 sensors are in the air; EC and pH
sensors, and the dissolved oxygen sensors are in the water.
Figure 5. SHT75.
Figure 6. Photoresistor.
the dissolved oxygen. Through fiber-optic dissolved oxygen sensor (see Figure
9), the concentration of oxygen is easy to be detected [6].
2.3. Actuators
There are five actuators that adjust circumstance in order to achieve the ideal
atmosphere environment, water condition, and light. For atmosphere, CO2 ge-
nerator, dehumidifier, and air-conditioner are required. In water, a pump sys-
tem will adjust the water condition.
2.3.2. Dehumidifier
An industrial dehumidifier (see Figure 11) will be used to dehumidification by
condensation (cooling the air the water vapor phase to a liquid [8]) and reheat
the air.
2.3.3. Air-Conditioner
Temperature is control by CHP and absorption refrigerator. CHP burn the fuel
to heat. And the absorption refrigerator (see Figure 12) will cool the air.
2.3.5. Light
LED light bar is used to enhance light. Different light intensity will control by an
open different number of LED light bar (see Figure 14).
2.4. Communication
Under the IoT greenhouse environment, numerous sensors, as we introduced in
the former part and actuators can be utilized for connection throughout the
greenhouse, capable of monitoring and detecting the change in the environment.
The readings from these sensors can be used in analytics and providing to su-
pervision applications, thus maintaining seamless connectivity between devices
and the server become important to the system, especially when we look for pre-
cision in operation.
For the network that connects sensors and actuator, we choose to use ZigBee.
ZigBee is a protocol that had been developed based on IEEE 802.15.4 which de-
fines the physical and MAC layers. The characteristic that ZigBee support mesh
topology with very-low power consumption makes it the most attractive wireless
device to use in our project. Since it has multi-hop communication capability, it
provides a relatively long range for communication [9]. Figure 15 shows our
architecture of mesh network for greenhouse IoT system. A platform embedded
with RF receiver and microcontroller units serves as a local host in the network.
The farther sensors send the message to other sensors, close to the local host,
which can receive the data from sensors which can retransmit these messages
too much closer sensors and finally to the local host. Then, the analyzed data will
be sent to the actuators to stable the environment. The data from each green-
house will also be forwarded to the cloud server using TCP/IP protocols by the
2.5 G networks, such as GPRS, depends on our need for transmission length.
Since we are talking about a greenhouse, it means the transmission will hap-
pen in a relatively short range. There is also another low consumption wireless
technology such as Lora, but we don’t need to handle the transmission for more
than 100 meters or strong interference problems, so ZigBee will be enough for a
greenhouse environment. Combining with the mesh network, the data and con-
trol messages can be passed from one node to another node through multiple
paths, which extends the range of the network and can be competent when we
need to manage many devices at the same time, and also ensure the reliability of
communication [10].
For the regular wireless network, a lot of energy consumption happened when
receiver detecting signals while no call comes in, in another word, idle listening.
Now with the LPWAN technology, we can set the base station to stay in low
power mode on a condition that there is no need to transmit-receive or control.
CPU will only wake up when localhost received commands from the upper layer.
Under such circumstance, the ratio of idle time to the total waking up time will
be surely shortened and thus prolong the devices’ power endurance [11].
The further transmission from the base station to the cloud server will be
processed on the 2.5 G network. In order to connect to the cloud servers, we set
a two-way satellite connection, which connected to the server which coordinates
the sensor patches and provides a relational database service. We would expect
to use turnkey base stations since they need to run unattended.
2.6. Analytics
In order to formulate a forecast model that precisely predicts the growth and
crop yield in the greenhouse, we embed crop simulators into the Analytics Layer
of the system. According to USDA (United States Department of Agriculture),
“crop simulators are computer programs that mimic the growth and develop-
ment of crops. Data on weather and crop management are processed to predict
crop yield, maturity date, effectiveness of fertilizers, and other elements of crop
production.” [12] To be more specific, our system collects data of the environ-
ment such as temperature, humidity, pH value, daylight explosion via the sensor
network. Because of the complication of the data processing and forecast mak-
ing, an appropriate model is needed. On the one hand, artificial neural network
(ANN) methodology, designed for dynamic nonlinear systems like growth and
development of crops, is an appropriate model and simulation tool [13]. In the
recent decades, the ANN model has been used in crop development modeling
[14] [15] and crop yield prediction [16] [17] [18] On the other hand, ANN has a
better capability in yield prediction than regression and blind guess methods. In
this situation, the ANN-6 and ANN-10 are suitable models for prediction [13].
Once the data is collected and transmitted from the service layer, machine
learning algorithms such as decision tree learning, artificial neural networks
(ANN), and Bayesian networks accommodate the collected data and then for-
mulate simulation models. The machine learning algorithms—along with statis-
tical models, mechanistic models, and functional models [19]—form the forecast
model that illustrates the future growth and yield of the plants.
In the market demand, deep neural network for historical data processing,
which includes different kinds of crops price and demand of particular crop, is
used, so the system can predict the quantity demanded and price of particular
types of plants in the upcoming local market. To be specific, because of complic-
ity of the demand and price of crops, we cannot simply utilize a linear regression
model. However, these two machine learning algorithms, 1) Recurrent Neural
Network (RNN) and 2) Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), are suitable for our
prediction of crops demand, which is nonlinear and influenced by multiple fac-
tors [20].
Through the data collection and procession, our IoT system will output a
plain and palpable conclusion. For example, our IoT system can help farmers to
decide what to plan even if they have no knowledge about market. It can also
help farmers to control the whole system with diversification plants even if they
have no experience of planting certain type of food. The IoT system makes our
greenhouse to be automated.
Eventually, data collected from the greenhouse could further improve the
forecast models. This data will be saved in the database and functional data will
be sent back to local server.
“Home”: The “Home” page consists of three sections, “Initial Setting” (displays
the type and quantity of each plant), “Supervision” (displays temperature, humid-
ity, light, pH, and CO2 measurements) (Figure 18), and “Prospect” (shows harvest
date, predicted yield and price of each plant).
“Explore”: The “Explore” page has two sections, “Market” and “Trading”. The
“Market” section provides the users with information about the predicted future
prices of different categories of plants and the demanded price at a future date
(Figure 19). The “Trading” section features a trading platform that allows users to
sell their products.
“Alert”: The “Alert” page notifies the users about extreme conditions or critical
changes in the market and in the greenhouse. To be more specific, if there are ab-
normal measurements received by the cloud, if the nutrients to cultivate the
plants are out of stock, and if a natural disaster takes place, alerts are imme-
diately shown on this page.
“My Account”: The “My Account” page also has two sections, “Settings” and
“Wallet”. The “Setting” section has features such as “Account Security” and oth-
er general setting options. The “Wallet” section is the User’s digital wallet that
shows the balance within the user’s account.
3. Discussions
3.1. Evaluation
While some greenhouses today have installed a monitor system, they still require
human labor to adjust the settings or equipment. On the other hand, although
an automatic controlling system has been applied to some greenhouses, it lacks
the reference standards that maximize the yield and enhance the quality of
crops. Instead, our IoT-based hydroponic greenhouse integrated with both the
monitor system and the automated controlling system takes advantage of the
analytics of massive data from the cloud [21]. With machine learning algorithms
like ANN to process the collected data, the cloud generates decision of adjust-
ments in temperature, humidity, pH value, and light exposure and immediately
sends them to the automatic controlling system.
4. Conclusion
Our greenhouse, driven by market demands and based on optimization sche-
dule, is an integration of IoT with agriculture. The automation and high effi-
ciency on monitoring and controlling greenhouse environment are crucial. Such
a system can be easily installed and maintained, and the manager of this system
can access all necessary data collecting from the sensors. We have expressed the
benefits of an IoT-based greenhouse to meet the needs of local communities
with the best prices and maximized profits.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this pa-
per.
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