From Wireless Sensor Network to Wireless Smart System: Agriculture

The technology of Internet of Things (IoT) and smart systems are being widely implemented in various spheres of human activity and everyday life. Agriculture is not an exception. Usually, wireless sensors or wireless sensor networks (WSNs) acquire data in such systems. The authors of the article had developed and brought to serial production standalone devices and WSNs for usage in agriculture. As world experience shows, developing a smart system for any application is quite a difficult task, as each such system is unique in terms of used technologies, protocols, hardware and software. The article presents the experience of the authors in developing the principles of creation and architecture of a smart system for agriculture based on a WSN created by the authors. The analysis of existing architectures of smart systems and solutions based on the IoT made it possible to choose a typical system architecture what was further adapted to the applied task of agriculture. Two main components of the proposed smart system are defined, namely, a data server and a device at the edge. These components will further define a stack of protocols and standards for communication and data transferring, as well as a set of basic hardware and software. The structure of each of the main components is described and their functional blocks are clearly defined. Finally, the challenges and problems faced by developers at the initial stages of developing of the smart system for agriculture are given. Most of the mentioned challenges are currently not completely solved by the world community and during development of each systems, they need an individual approach and different tools for solving.