Emerging Frontiers in CEA: An IoT-Based System Architecture for Smart, Sustainable, and High-Yielding Controlled Environment Agriculture

Abstract Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) cultivates fruits, vegetables, herbs, and other plants in fully or semi-controlled environments. It enables precise manipulation of critical plant growth factors such as temperature, humidity, light intensity, CO 2 , and nutrients, fostering optimal production. While CEA offers unparalleled yield potential, it has challenges like operational complexities and energy consumption concerns. We propose an IoT (Internet of Things) based system architecture for sensing and controlling CEA systems to address these challenges. The proposed system is designed for a hydroponic-based CEA system. In the system, four IoT devices are used to connect sensors. Each device utilizes various sensors to collect real-time data on key growth factors. IoT devices publish data as Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) telemetry messages, accepted by various subscribers for processing and actions. A Microsoft Azure Edge device has been deployed as the data processing and analysis hub. It processes the MQTT messages using software modules packaged as Dockerized containers, extracts relevant information, sends required control signals to actuators and forwards selected results to the Microsoft Azure cloud for further processing and notifications. Four IoT devices are available in the system to control the growth factors at optimal levels. Various actuators are connected to these devices, such as heaters, coolers, humidifiers, dehumidifiers etc.. The dashboard of the system has been built using Node-RED, and it displays the status of the sensors and actuators and can switch between manual mode and AI-controlled auto mode. The system has been tested continuously for twelve hours and the test results indicate that the system can manage and control modern CEA systems.