2021 12th International Conference on Information and Communication Systems (ICICS)

IoT Cloud Enabeled Model for Safe and Smart

Agriculture Environment
2021 12th International Conference on Information and Communication Systems (ICICS) | 978-1-6654-3351-8/20/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICICS52457.2021.9464567

Mais Tawalbeh Muhannad Quwaider Lo’ai A. Tawalbeh

Department of Computer Engineering Department of Computer Engineering Director of the Cyber Engineering
Jordan University of Science and Jordan University of Science and Technology/Cyber Security Research
Technology Technology Center, Department of Computing and
Irbid, Jordan Irbid, Jordan Cyber Security
[email protected] [email protected] Texas A&M University San Antonio
TX, USA
[email protected]

Abstract—The Internet of Things (IoT) has proven its companies compete in issuing new IoT devices and
effectiveness in developing several sectors by introduces smart applications associated with emerging technologies such as
systems to make sectors more efficient. So, cloud computing Mobile Cloud computing which resulted in more popularity
technology with its features and unlimited services is considered
of these devices [3].
the best infrastructure for IoT systems. All these technologies
affect economies and societies positively. Over the last years, the According to an article in oct/2020 [4], the agriculture
agriculture area has become a hot research topic, and IoT sector is the targeted one for changing and enhancing by
applications are rapidly growing on it, where the researchers utilizing the IoT applications and AI different mechanisms.
aim to make automated smarter farms. IoT applications help The agricultural technology market is exploding, where the
farmers to be aware of the latest information and developments
Global Artificial Intelligence in agriculture market analysts
in this field. Besides, the existence of cloud-based smart
expects that its annual growth rate will be 28.38% between
applications and models helps farmers to have the ability to
control their crops. For example, these systems have the ability 2019 – 2024 [4]. Besides, according to the UN report, the
for data collecting, analysis, and expect the best reaction in global agricultural production will altitude 69% between 2010
different situations, in order to handle the expected problem and 2050 [1]. That means it is a good idea that one of the
previously. Such as the problems result from unsuitable weather important vocations improved to poised for a 21st-century
and several crops disease. So, the IoT applications lead to an makeover. However, technological advancement in
increase the crop production and reduce the loss of it. In this cultivating existed from the last decades. For example, in the
work, we propose a secure cloud-enabled IoT model with 1800's the grain elevators, chemical fertilizers, and the first
authorization and authentication techniques using the Amazon
gas-powered tractor are achieved, down to the use of satellites
Web Service platform. And we address the agriculture domain
in the late 1900s [1].
for more safe farm environments.
In the farming world, crop productivity determines the
Keywords— Internet of Things, Cloud Computing,
success or failure of agribusinesses. So, these crops need full
Agriculture, Information Security, Amazon Web Services
monitoring by studying all crop status. Then, making
I. INTRODUCTION decisions that could help reducing crop problems, crop loss,
and cost. For example, pollution, disease, insects’ raids, etc.,
According to UN studies, the world's population is
using suitable techniques. So far, this happens manually by
expanding noticeably, and in 2050 it will reach 9.7 billion [1]
farmers, which means time-wasting and increasing error
, causing the need to increasing productivity in various sectors.
occurrence. Besides, there are farm labor shortages across the
The world is tending to become smarter to meet these
world [4]. So, the rely on traditional and manual ways it is not
demands by utilizing technology revolutions to automating
enough. Instead of that, utilizing the IoT devices and
several services including, many aspects of life and daily
applications in collecting data, then processing it, and making
tasks. Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI),
suitable decisions using different AI techniques will enhance
Cloud Computing, and different data analytics techniques play
the crop monitoring process, which means enhancing
key roles in this revolution.
productivity and profitability. Some smart technologies for
The IoT [2] by becomes a noticeable part in developing improving the farms are implemented. For example, John
diverse sectors to be more efficient and sustainable. For Deere [1] already improved his tractors to be connected to the
example, education, industry, commercial, finance, internet to collecting data about farmers' crop yields. Besides,
transportation, and health. Moreover, the biggest technology smart greenhouses are utilizing IoT devices in data collecting

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 2021 12th International Conference on Information and Communication Systems (ICICS)

to control the microclimate of the crops and protect it from IoT model with authorization and authentication techniques
predators. using the Amazon Web Service platform. The model ensures
security measures set before deploying the IoT-enabled
With the success of smart farming techs and increasing the
devices into the secured network. Also, it ensures that IoT
rely on them, IoT devices still has limited features and
devices can protect shared data through encryption, specific
resources like storage and battery life. So, supporting the IoT
certificates, and cryptography keys. Besides, we establish a
environment with huge storage capacity and efficient
simulation environment using the MCCSim Simulator to
computing resources and services becomes required to
study the impact of introducing the edge layer on the main
improve farming systems efficiency. For example, the
environment-affected parameters.
Rwandan Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources
implemented a cloud-based smart farming system, where it The rest of this paper as follows; section II presents a
provides data to Rwandan farmers by giving them access to a review of related work. Section III presents an overview of the
searchable database and sending real-time push notifications, AWS environment. Section IV illustrates our proposed secure
among various other features [4]. cloud-enabled IoT model. The MCCSim experimentation and
results present in Section V. Finally, the paper concluded in
Cloud computing is a powerful technology
Section VI.
considered a turning point in smart systems due to its features
[5]. It provides a virtual environment to store data, then II. RELATED WORK
accessing it remotely. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and
A. Agriculture Smart Systems
Adobe are commonly used cloud computing providers around
the world. However, despite all these features, cloud There The agriculture field becomes a recent, hot, and
computing facing different challenges. Delay of significant research topic as many other fields. Due to its
communication and security risks are majors’ challenges. impact on life, whether as a food source for individuals or as
Communication time is a critical point when dealing with a an economic aspect of the government, companies, and
real-time application, which needs to make a decision individuals who works in this field. There are different
simultaneously. For example, any decision lateness in smart researches in this scope, where they cover several smart
farms may leads to crop damage and thus large financial agriculture applications.
losses. For this issue, the cloudlet concept is used [6], which The authors in [9] proposed a monitoring system that
is rich resources and trustworthy secondary cloud distributed aims to increase the crop's yield and reduce the losses of it by
closer to the IoT devices. So, the IoT devices communicating controlling several environmental conditions. For example,
with the nearest cloudlet, which reduces the communication temperature and humidity. The system based on the CC3200
delay. block which includes a microcontroller, network processor,
and Wi-Fi unit. Besides, the system consists of different types
On the other hand, the security and privacy risks are other
of sensors. TMP007 sensor used to monitor the temperature
significant challenges facing IoT and cloud computing
values and HDC1010 sensor used to track the humidity
technologies [7]. There is a rise in security risks that
percentage in the air. Any abnormal increase in these
compromise IoT devices due to the new hacking
conditions’ values, MMS sends to the farmers to inform
methodologies that misuse IoT shortcomings. These IoT them. Also, the system consists of an MT9D111 camera
security dangers affect the IoT itself. In addition, it influences
sensor to capture immediate images for specific filed and sent
the applications running on it and the tasks they provide. For
them to the farmer through GPRS.
instance, Hackers and aggressors focus on IoT computing
TalentCloud system is a cloud based smart farm system,
nodes that store or convey delicate and sensitive information,
created by the Chinese company [4]. It utilized IoT sensors to
that any leaking, changing, or harming of this data prompts collect data like earth status, humidity, and air temperature.
sincere dangers to organizations. Authentication and
Besides, it utilized cameras to collect qualitative data. Then
authorization [8] are considered as primary security
all this real data is transferring to Microsoft Azure’s cloud,
components to improve the network protection level, where
which contains the latest agricultural research, for processing
the authentication happened at the beginning of the
together and provides recommendations for farmers, such as
application, before any other checks, and it aims to verify that disease treatments, improve growing conditions, and the
the user is confirmed to enter the system or not, while the
crops life cycle.
authorization process focuses on allowing or denying the user
The researchers in [10] aims to utilize IoT technologies to
access to network resources and services by determining the
make agriculture smart. This work proposes a remote-
user access levels and privileges.
controlled smart robot for smart irrigation systems and smart
Based on what we mentioned above, there is a need to warehouse management systems. Where it has the ability to
address the security concerns in IoT systems by introducing a control operations such as weeding, splashing, and humidity
secure model. In this work, we propose a secure cloud-enabled detecting. In addition, it can monitor temperature, humidity

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 2021 12th International Conference on Information and Communication Systems (ICICS)

and detect thefts. Then makes decisions based on real-time some exceptional cases, where the communication with the
data. AWS cloud has been necessary [13].
Each IoT device needs to authenticate itself in the AWS
B. Exsisting AWS Models
model by authenticating with the AWSIoT core using the
device certificate (.X509), cryptography keys (public and
 AWSAC Model private keys) [14], and AWSIoT core certificate. This process
In 2015, Zhang et al. and his team [11] proposed an ensures that every device in the model is trusted. Besides, the
access control model (AWSAC) to secure data sharing and edge layer concept in our model has presented as an edge core
resource collaborations in the AWS public cloud called the Greengrass core that communicating with IoT
environment. The AWSAC model aims to protect sharing devices (Greengrass devices) through a Greengrass group
data and resources between owners within one account or [15]. The Greengrass core also has a certificate, private key,
multiple accounts) in the AWS public clouds. It depends on and AWSIoT core certificate to authenticate itself with
policy-based access control, where the access permission is AWSIoT core, to be trusted in the AWS model [16]. There is
defined as a policy file. The policy file is attached to the user, a group (Greengrass group) found to combine the edge core
group, or resources. The users mean individuals who (Greengrass core) with IoT devices (Greengrass devices) to
authenticated and authorized to access the cloud resources authenticate each IoT node with the edge node. All the raw
through their accounts. Multiple users who shared the same data is encrypted using the Advanced Encryption Standard
permissions could place in the same group for simplicity. (AES) algorithm [17] in Galois/Counter Mode(GCM). And
Depending on this concept, access within the AWS public exchanging between the layers using a secure protocol, which
cloud has become more controllable. Figure 1 illustrates the is the MQTT Protocol [18], and the communication happened
AWSAC model. securely using MQTT topics. Figure 1 illustrates the
Enhanced AWSIoTAC model.
III. SECURE CLOUD-ENABLED IOT MODEL B. Applying the Enhanced AWSIoTAC Model in Agriculture
The proposed model aims to enhance the security level and Environment Applications
making better real-time dictions. It introduces the edge Each layer of the IoT model introduces security
computing concept between the physical and the cloud layers. challenges and, at the same time, a possibility to enforce
Security components include authentication and
authorization techniques, apply on each level. By default, IoT
devices request a closer available edge without any need to
communicate with the enterprise cloud except for some
anomalies. This supports the overcomes of latency issues
from the reliance on cloud layer services and makes decisions
faster.
A. Proposed Model: Enhanced AWSIoTAC Model
The AWSIoTAC proposed model enhances the existing
AWS models by adding edge computing concept. The
security between layers supported by certificates, policies,
public and private keys, and a secure communication
protocol.
Our model utilizes the Amazon Web Service (AWS) [12]
which is a platform provided by Amazon company. Provides
several cloud services and introduces the ability to implement
different technologies such as edge computing and IoT
environments.
The proposed model consists of an AWS cloud layer
where the public cloud services and resources are existing, an
edge layer that provides some services and caches common
data, and the physical layer where the IoT devices present to
collect data. The data collected in the physical layer go to the
edge node for analyzing and processing issues instead of the
enterprise cloud, which saves power and delay, except in

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 2021 12th International Conference on Information and Communication Systems (ICICS)

Fig. 1. AWS Enhanced AWSIoTAC proposed model

security and privacy standards and protocols. For example, in damage or change on it may affect the economy of
the device layer, the sensor's data is sent to the edge, fog, and agribusinesses. Figure 1 shows applying the enhanced
then to the cloud, a need for authorization and certificates that AWSIoTAC proposed model on the agriculture field. We
trust specific servers to minimize these attacks [19]. consider the agricultural association (cloud layer) which
Firmware security, hardware address authenticating, and managed several types of crops distributed in several farms
more, however, this comes to the cost of the power (edge layer). The crops are connected to a set of sensors
consumption, as some of the wireless enables devices such as (Greengrass devices) to collecting data, then transferring it to
wearables are battery-run. Then such security measures need the farm cloud ( Greengrass core ) for processing and make
to be revisited to accomplish both security and power decisions. As we discussed before, the types of crops
constraints. On the cloud layer, security measures need to differentiate from each other by the effecting conditions.
ensure the network protocol between the edge and maybe the Assume that there is a greenhouse that includes winter crops
fog nods and occasionally from sensors. Message passing and is connected to set of sensors to monitor it by collecting
protocol, point to point encryption, certificates all provide data about set of conditions like (air temperature, humidity,
less data spying and logging. At the data processing and end- etc.. ), then the data sent to farmers staff who authenticate to
user level, we need to ensure that the long-term data storage access this type of data by connecting with the sensors within
and real-time data processing are protected from sniffing and the Greengrass group to process the case and make a decision.
phishing scripting attacks, etc. Data fusion can introduce For example, another greenhouse includes summer crops,
another access to the hackers to identify the user, hence should be accessed by another farmer’s staff who
privacy breach. authenticated with the summer crops sensors within different
As Example in smart farms, IoT devices and cloud Greengrass group. Each device registered in the system
services are utilized together for collecting, storing, and should be authenticated and authorized regarding the
processing specific data to make recommendations for certificates, cryptography keys, and policy files.
manage the crops and improve their productivity. For
IV. SIMULATOR EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND
example, these recommendations may rely on crop types and
EVALUATION
by which factors it affects and which factors are suitable for
its growth, etc... These collected data are very important and This section presents the results of the selected simulation
considered sensitive data because the success or failure of the experiments (MCCSim) [20]. This simulation is suitable for
crops relies on decisions generated depend on it. And any mobile cloud computing environments, and it permits the

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 2021 12th International Conference on Information and Communication Systems (ICICS)

researchers to examine the communication cost like the y = -0.0019x + 0.0779 (1)
average end-to-end packet delay and power cost per user y = -0.0038x + 0.176 (2)
among clients and different cloud levels. MCCSim provides y = -0.0057x + 0.572 (3)
numerous attributes and various settings, which it can set The other performance parameter that we measured is
according to the application requirements to suit their the delay. As it can be seen from Figure 2, for the area of
different types that range from smart homes and office (600x600 m2), the delay equals to 0.091416938 mS for 10
systems to health and military applications with a large edges and to 0.06309 mS at 20 edges. The delay Y is
amount of data. For example, the number of users, number of decreasing with the increase in the number of edges X. This
clouds/edges servers, type of cloud/edges movement, relationship is described by (4). The delay will increase as the
destination cloud level distance, data transfer rate, and covered area increased as can be noticed for the covered area
covered region space, etc. of (1200x1200 m2), the delay equals to 0.22011525 mS when
there are 10 edges and equals to 0.154096313 mS when there
A. MCCSim Experiments
are 20 edges. And in the covered area (1800x1800 m2), the
In the MCCSim simulation environment, there are several delay equals to 0.3022081875 mS when there are 10 edges
settings and properties which we can set according to our and equals to 0.2156608125 mS when there are 20 edges. The
experiment requirements. These experiments aim to simulate equations that describe them are respectively (5) and (6).
our model as a real environment and study its behavior. We y = -0.0028x + 0.1169 (4)
study the impact of increasing the number of distributed y = -0.0057x + 0.264 (5)
edges during the communication on the end-to-end power y = -0.0087x + 0.3863 (6)
consumption and delay in different region dimensions which
are: (600x600 m2), (1200x1200 m2), and (1800x1800 m2).
The client’s data sent to the edge using 3G, 4G, or Wi-Fi, and
we assume that the movement of clients and the distribution
of clouds/edges servers are random. Other configurations like
client movement speed, movement type, and data packet size,
have values of (2m/s, randomly, and 48 bytes), respectively.
All these values will be the same in all cases. Also, in order
to increase the accuracy of the results, each experiment is
repeated for 10 times, then we compute the average end-to-
end power and delay per user. The testing time for each
experiment ranges from 30 to 65 minutes.
 The simulated Scenario: Number of Edge Impact on
the Power and Delay
In this scenario, we fixed the number of clients to 200
clients, fixed the data packet rate to 1 pkt/s, and the number
of edge servers is changing as 10, 11, 12, ………, 19, 20 edge
servers. Figure 2 shows the changes in the power
consumption and delay results with increasing the number of
used edges and fixed other parameters in (600x600 m2), Fig. 2. MCCSim simulation results (power and delay)
(1200x1200 m2), and (1800x1800 m2) covered areas.
As can be seen from Figure 2, for the area (600x600 m2), V. CONCLUSION
the power consumption equals to 0.060944625 mW when
The proposed authorization IoT model provides a safe
there are 10 edges and equals to 0.04206 mW when there are
environment with security measures that ensures the privacy
20 edges. So, the power consumption decreases with the
of the communicating IoT-enabled devices and nodes and
increase in number of edges. This relationship that describes
their shared data. Upon successful implementation and correct
the power consumption Y in terms of the number of edges X
configuration, the users can be sure that their systems assets
by (1). If we increase the covered area to be (1200x1200 m2),
are protected. The three layers proposed model is used to
the power consumption will be 0.1467435 mW when there
provide secure Cloud-enabled IoT systems with edge
are 10 edges and equals to 0.102730875 mW when there are
computing layer and sensors fusion. Many real-life
20 edges. This relation can be described by (2). Finally, for
applications can utilize this model, such as Agriculture
the covered area of (1800x1800 m2) , the power consumption
healthcare, disaster recovery, and many others. Besides, We
equals to 0.201472125 mW when there are 10 edges and
used a simulation tool to obtain performance results. The
equals to 0.143773875 mW when there are 20 edges. This
power and delay simulation results are obtained using the
relationship can be represented by (3).
Mobile Cloud Computing Simulator (MCCSim). The

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 2021 12th International Conference on Information and Communication Systems (ICICS)

simulation results show that the power and the delay are [10] N. Gondchawar and R. S. Kawitkar, “IoT based smart
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Computer and Communication Engineering, vol. 5, no. 6, pp.
Acknowledgment: This research is supported by the Texas
838–842, 2016.
A&M University Chancellor Research Initiative (CRI) grant
[11] Y. Zhang, F. Patwa, and R. Sandhu, “Community-based
awarded to Texas A&M University-San Antonio, TX, USA.
secure information and resource sharing in AWS public
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