Development of energy efficient and location-aware approaches for IoT and WSN based framework for precision agriculture

Abstract

ABSTRACT Internet of Things (IoT) has become an inevitable part of our life. Wireless sensor network (WSN) can be integrated into IoT to meet the challenges of seamless communication between things. IoT and WSN can be used in precision agriculture where data are collected from crop field and analyzed to take timely decision about farming. In precision agriculture application utilizing IoT and WSN, crop field can be better monitored. Farmers can take many decisions about farming like harvesting and irrigation. Sensors can be deployed in crop field to collect related data like humidity, temperature, nutrients, etc. with the help of IoT. However, sensors have limited energy as they are battery-powered. Their limited energy is dissipated in sensing and sending data to other sensors. A sensor (known as mote) is generally battery powered with initial energy in the order of 1 Joule only. Generally, the battery is not replaced as the sensors are deployed in different environment and not easily reachable always. In smart precision agriculture using IoT and WSN, all operations like routing should be done in energy efficient way due to limited energy of sensors. To know the affected crop area, the sensors must be location-aware in precision agriculture. Again, as the sensors are vulnerable to many attacks like physical or network attacks the localization methods need to be secured in such application. This thesis proposes a framework using IoT and WSN where agricultural processes will be automated. The application requirement for this is real-time monitoring and continuous sensing and transmission. These on the other hand require energy efficient WSN. An energy efficient routing protocol is to be developed for real time monitoring of agricultural field. Sensor nodes are vulnerable to many attacks also. For successful implementation of the framework the underlying WSN must be energy efficient and location-aware. Energy efficiency in data collection is achieved by clustering and routing while security is provided by a secure localization method. Hence, combining location-aware sensor nodes with energy-efficient clustering in WSN will be an effective IoT-based application in precision agriculture.