Annals of Emerging Technologies in Computing (AETiC)

Vol. 4, No. 3, 2020

Review Article

A Review on Smart IoT Based Farming

Hira Farooq1, Hafeez UR Rehman1,*, Anam Javed1, Mehnaz Shoukat1 and Sandra
Dudley2
1Khwaja Fareed University of Engineering and Information Technology, Pakistan
Hirra.Farooq@yahoo.com; siddiqov@gmail.com; anamjaved9116@gmail.com; mehnazshoukat04@gmail.com
2 School of Engineering and Design, London South Bank University, London, UK
dudleyms@lsbu.ac.uk
*Correspondence: siddiqov@gmail.com

Received: 12th April 2020; Accepted: 15th May 2020; Published: 1st July 2020
Abstract: With the increase of world population, the availability of food to all inhabitants on globe is one
of the significant challenges. These challenges need to be addressed by adopting innovative options to
improve the soil capacity and the safety of environmental resources. The availability of real-time vital
parameters related to farming such as moisture, temperature, weather, crops diseases and water management
as well as predictive actions against the changes in parameters can provide great help to deal with these
challenges. Internet of Things (IoT) is an evolving technology, has great potential to play and prevail its
miraculous role in almost every field. IoT is a network of things that are capable of self-configuring network.
The development of intelligent IoT based Smart farming is day by day getting its space in developed
countries. It facilitates towards precision agriculture and turning the face of agriculture production.
Subsequently, it is reducing spoilage of resources such as water, fertilizers, operating cost. The availability
and development of cost effective smart miniaturized sensors, processors and communication technologies
has made IoT based smart farming feasible. This paper aims to review most recent papers from year 2015 to
2020 in IoT based farming domain. The recent work is highlighted in terms of their scope, methodology and
summarised in a table followed by discussion and analysis. The intention is to provide a platform for the
future researchers to get a start towards a system with a single standard expert and complete autonomous
assistive system.

Keywords: IoT; Smart Farming; Sensors; Cloud; Microcontroller; Machine Learning

1. Introduction
Farming is one of the oldest livelihoods in the history of mankind, and perhaps among those
changing the most in today’s world. Modern farmers face challenges like never before. With rising
global population rates, changing nutritional demands, resource restraints, climate changes and
enterprise competition, there is huge pressure on the agricultural industry to produce more food. A
decline in total agriculture land utilized for food production has been observed over the past decades.
Around 19.5 million square miles (39.47% of the world ‘s land area) arable area was recorded for food
production in 1991, which was reduced to approximately 18.6 million square miles (37.73% of the
world's land area) in 2013 [1]. The gap between demand and supply of food is becoming more
significant and alarming with the passage of time.
Fortunately, innovations in technologies open new ways for the agricultural industry to meet
this global challenge. Systems such as IoT sensors and big data analytics are offering chances to
reinvent archaic farming practices, creating more cost-efficient processes that produce higher
quantities of food with less strain on resources. IoT based smart farming system is built for
monitoring the crop field with the help of sensors and automating the irrigation system. The aim is
to increase the yields at maximum reducing water consumption and ultimately shift the traditional

Hira Farooq, Hafeez UR Rehman, Anam Javed, Mehnaz Shoukat and Sandra Dudley, "A Review on Smart IoT Based Farming”,
Annals of Emerging Technologies in Computing (AETiC), Print ISSN: 2516-0281, Online ISSN: 2516-029X, pp. 17-28, Vol. 4, No. 3,
1st July 2020, Published by International Association of Educators and Researchers (IAER), DOI: 10.33166/AETiC.2020.03.003,
Available: http://aetic.theiaer.org/archive/v4/v4n3/p3.html.
AETiC 2020, Vol. 4, No. 3 18

Agriculture to smart agriculture as well as Precision Agriculture (PA) based on automation and IoT
technologies. IoT empowers numerous crops-oriented applications such as crop growth monitoring
and selection, irrigation decision support, etc.
The famers can monitor the field’s condition from anywhere anytime. In this paper recent
diverse solution on IoT based smart farming systems are explored and presented. Aiming at
compactly review the recent progress in the said domain to make an understanding of IoT based
smart farming for the readers.

2. Literature Review
The system presented by [2] aims at adopting IoT in agriculture to exploit automation approach.
Monitoring environmental factors plays a vital role to increase the production of the efficient crops.
Two most important natural factors are considered in this study namely temperature and humidity
of the field. Humidity sensor sense the water in air. The proposed system consists of temperature
(TMP007) & humidity (HDC1010) sensors and CC3200 single chip. The CC3200 is a cheap and faster
programmable Wi-Fi MCU that enables true, integrated IoT development. If sensor sense abnormal
reading, it transmits field information about the temperature, humidity to famers. A camera is linked
with this chip to take images and send to farmers via MMS and subsequently the farmer will take
appropriate action.
[3] Exploits the LM35 temperature sensor and soil moisture sensor that is deployed in field and
used to monitor the water supplements. [3] proposed a system comprises of LM35 temperature
sensor, moisture sensor, RPi 3 model B, IC 3208 converter, relay and a buzzer. A threshold value 2.4v
is set for soil moisture; this may vary from crop to crop. If the value is found less than the set threshold
(2.4v in this case) the soil is classified as dry and signal is sent to turn on the water pump. Otherwise
Soil is classified as wet and motor will be turned OFF. The data acquire from sensors are ingested to
the cloud and can be accessible to farmer via his/her mobile/PC. The system let the farmer when to
turn ON/OFF the water pump.
The aim of the investigation presented in [4] is to decrease the loss of water, labour and improve
the productivity. Moisture sensor is used to sense the content of moisture in soil and sends moisture
sensor information to Arduino. Moisture sensor is used to detect moisture in the soil. It works on the
principle of open and short circuit. When the soil is dry the circuit behaves like an open circuit and
close if the soil is wet. Wi-Fi module is used for communication to transmit data from sensor layer to
the cloud. Data collected from moisture sensor is fed into Arduino and Arduino upload this
information or values on cloud by using Wi-Fi. Threshold value is set according to the crop’s need.
Moisture level checked with respect to predefined threshold value. The threshold value is different
for different crops. If the moisture value is less than the reference value pump is ON otherwise
remains OFF. This helps in reduction of water usage.
[5] Proposed an innovative smart IoT based Stick equipped with temperature and moisture
sensors, providing real time sensor data to famers on handheld device. The purpose of the study
carried in [5] is to provide cost effective solution to increase the productivity. The stick equipped with
Arduino Mega 2560 augmented with moisture sensor and temperature sensor to monitor
temperature and moisture powered by solar panel as well as battery (2200mAh; 11.2V). The stick
works as a plug and play manner, it starts transmitting live information to cloud through ESP8266
Wi-Fi module as it is placed into a field. The cloud data is accessible to a hand-held device like mobile
cellular phone, tablet or laptop. The obtained data can easily be shared with some expert remotely
via cloud. The arrangement assists famers by providing precise live feed of environmental
temperature and soil moisture to increase the yield and take effective consideration of food
production. The proposed system is tried on Live Agriculture fields giving high accuracy over 99%
in data feeds.
Another investigation aimed at reduction of water consumption and subsequently maintains
optimal ambient parameters by monitoring soil moisture condition, temperature and humidity in
real time [6]. The system consists of WSAN component, cloud and user application [6]. WSAN
consists of sink, sensor and actuator nodes. ZigBee is used as a communication technology, which is

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AETiC 2020, Vol. 4, No. 3 19

based on IEEE 802.15.4. A board with GPRS capabilities is used to transmit messages to cloud
additionally responsible for getting irrigation related commands from cloud. Sink node acts like
network controller while sensor and actuator nodes perform as router node or end node. Cloud is
responsible for data dispensation, data saving and event detection for irrigation. User application
serves as a user interface (UI) to view the location of network node and to access sensor data.
Soil features monitoring remotely is an emerging trend to enhance the crops productivity. An
innovative approach by considering chemical properties of the soil has been applied in [7]. The work
presented in [7] considered pH values in addition to temperature and moisture of soil. The soil
characteristics are monitored through smartphones in real time to characterize the soil. The pH value
of a solution is an indication of its acidity or alkalinity [8]. PH values range from 1-14, value less than
seven indicates stronger the acidity [8] otherwise the soil is characterized as stronger in Alkalinity
[8]. Antimony electrode is used to find pH value while temperature is determined by using DS18B20
sensor [7]. System is developed on STM32 Nucleo platform. The STM32 Nucleo board provides
flexible way to users to build prototypes or smart systems. The collected sensor data is transferred to
a client mobile phone via Bluetooth so that he/she can act promptly regarding fertilizer application.
The proposed system has great potential to reduce the fertilization consumption and thus crop failure
risk while maximizing the yields per acre.
A similar work is presented in [9] with a different infrastructure technology. Soil features for
example pH, temperature and humidity values are monitored. Based on the data, coming from
various sensors, farmers cultivate their crops. The system consists of pH, LM35 temperature and
HH10D humidity sensors. Based on the soil and environmental properties the system provides
suggestions to cultivate suitable crop in addition to real time monitoring. Sensors values are in the
form of analog and to convert from Analog to digital MCP3008 microcontroller is used. General
purpose input output (GPIO) act as interface between MCP3008 and ARM11. Sensor information sent
to server via Wi-Fi. Sensor values are optimized based on threshold values; and the decisions when
to turn on and off water supply or fertilization are made automatically based on the set predefined
values.
The framework presented in [10] provides real time access of soil humidity, moisture,
temperature and water level to farmer via mobile application. The system architecture consists of
NodeMCU, an open source or IoT platform that exploits the Lua scripting dialect based on ESP8266
SDK 1.4 and sensors to ambient parameters aforementioned. Water level sensor is responsible to
monitor level of water in water reservoir, while LM35 is used to read the temperature. When the
water level is below a certain threshold the farmer receives the information. Arduino microcontroller
is used to connect and control all the sensors. ThingSpeak is used to develop an application around
data accumulated by the sensors. It comprises constant data gathering, information dealing,
receptions, applications, and modules [10]. All sensors are deployed and connected with Arduino.
The sensors sense ambient data in real time and send to the organizer. Then farmer obtains the
information on the cloud platform in detail. It has been observed that the time stamped information
collected in cloud are helpful in anticipation regarding crop conditions and found significantly
accurate.
A smart greenhouse system is designed by [11] aiming at real time monitoring of the key
parameters remotely. The key parameters include temperature, humidity, moisture sensor, CO2 and
light intensity. Based on the reference values of soil moisture, windows or doors of the greenhouse
are rolled ON or OFF. Sensor data is collected and ingested to cloud. The sensors data at cloud is
accessible to farmer any time at any place. The farmer can then control the mechanical door/window
and water pump remotely.
Another study is carried out by [12] aimed at precise water supplement to crops. The system
manages waters supplement by monitoring and analysis of ambient parameters that includes
humidity and temperature, moisture and ultrasonic sensor. Ultrasonic sensor is used to monitor the
level of water in the reservoir. The proposed system consists of PX28015 ultrasonic sensors, soil
moisture sensor, DHT22/AM2302 Humidity and Temperature Sensor and ESP8266 microcontroller.
Sensors connected to microcontroller are used to sense the amount of water as a combined effort. The
system also determines the quantity of water required per day. A threshold value known as reference

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value is set. Motor pump will be ON/OFF each time when the amount of water is insufficient with
respect to the reference value. A notification is sent to server and mobile via MQTT protocol.
The investigation carried out by [13] aims at automating the water management for farming. The
IoT system used in this system comprises of moisture sensor mounted on ATMEGA328P Arduino
Uno, NodeMCU, Adafruit server, relay and motor. NodeMCU is used to send sensor value to
microcontroller. Adafruit server is used to store the sensor information. The soil moisture level
correlate with the moisture sensor value in terms of voltage. If the soil moisture value causes the
voltage level below 5v, soil is classified dry, and a signal is sends to microcontroller (MC) to switch
ON the water pump otherwise turns it OFF. In [13], the water management is carried out using an
automated irrigation system.
Facilitating famers with real time data and other external parameters may enable him/her to
make a prompt decision to manage time, cost and energy. Aiming this act, a smart system consists of
IoT and WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) is discussed in [14]. Alongside the common ambient
parameters like humidity, temperature soil moisture an additional ten days weather history report is
also considered in this proposed system. A transceiver KIANI sensor nodes developed by SIXAB and
IZU-WSN Research Lab, a processing unit comprises of Texas Instruments CC1101 Low-Power Sub-
1G, R Transceiver Processing unit outfits with Arduino Nano are used. The main unit is powered by
1200mah 3.7v Li-ion rechargeable battery. RPi3 is used as a gateway to collect sensors data and then
transfer it to servers. The data stored in servers are made available to user via websites and mobile
application. This remotely available data helps the user to make a prompt decision based on the
information gave by the system.
[15] Proposed a system that monitors temperature, humidity, soil moisture and also senses the
animal’s movement like cows, dogs that may cause the disruption of fields. Screening temperature,
moisture and motion of animals which may damage plants or fields are the main characteristics of
this system. If there is any disparity, an alert notification will be transmited to farmer. System
comprises of LM35 temperature sensor, humidity sensor, soil moisture sensor, Arduino UNO R3,
ESP8266 Wi-Fi and GSM module. An android application is also established for user to interact with
system. Arduino board is used as a gateway that sends information to cloud using Wi-Fi or GSM
capabilities. Wi-Fi is used for updating sensed information to cloud and GSM based communication
uses 2G, 3G and 4G services and is used to send alert message to famer cell phone. Farmer can also
preset season and irrigation schedule for plants. The developed android app serves an interface,
where farmer can interact and control or set irrigation scheduling according to season and
programmed to send warning notifications. The system provides real time data along with weather
reports, it is up to the farmer to take suitable action regarding switching ON/OFF the water pump
against contemporary sensor values.
The main focus of the study carried by [16] is to increase agriculture productivity while
minimizing the water consumption by using modernization techniques. This system introduces
robots that are responsible for weeding, spraying, moisture detecting, bird and animal detection,
warehouse management and smart irrigation. The system proposed by [16] comprises of node1,
node2, node3 and a PC. Each node has different devices and sensors integrated with it. Node 1
equipped with GPS (Global Positioning System) which can be either controlled by computer or can
be programmed. It is used for weeding, animal scaring and spraying. It consists of numerous sensors
and devices such as ultrasonic obstacle sensor, camera, siren, cutter and sprayer. On other hand,
Node 2 acts like a warehouse and consists of motion sensor, light sensor, humidity sensor,
temperature sensor, room heater, cooling fan interfaced with AVR microcontroller. DHT11 a low-
cost digital temperature and humidity sensor, sensors are used to detect humidity and temperature
and if the sensed information exceeds the predefined value then cooling fan will automatically turn
on and if the moisture value goes below the predefined value water pump gets turned on for
temperature maintenance. While node3 is a smart irrigation node which is used to screen and control
water pump with the help of mobile application. ZigBee Module is used for communication among
node 1 and node 2. The system has two modes manual and automatic. In case of manual mode, the
appliances will be turned on and off by the user while in automatic the appliances will be controlled
based on threshold values. Temperature maintenance, humidity management and theft detection can

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AETiC 2020, Vol. 4, No. 3 21

be managed by smart warehouse system. Quantity of water can be controlled by an algorithm which
maintains predefined values of temperature and soil moisture which can program into a
microcontroller.
A robot based smart farming is also investigated by [17]. The robot is equipped with numerous
sensors namely Thermo Hygro sensor, moisture, humidity, UV sensors, obstacle sensor, pH, PIR
(Passive Infrared) and CO2 sensors. The wirelessly controlled robot is responsible for spraying
pesticides, switching ON/OFF the motor and scaring the intruder such as birds or animals. The entire
system comprises of Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, Solar plate, Wi-Fi modem, ZigBee, DC motor or
spraying, LM380 audio speaker, water sprinkle, LCD and Camera. Robot is controlled as well as
programmed using a remote Pc. Whenever robot sense a water shortage in the fields, it turns on the
motor and when it senses Insects level movement it sprays pesticides.
The proposed system in [18] has numerous features like moisture and temperature sensing,
irrigation facilities, intruders scaring, and GPS based remote monitoring and controlling. Sensors are
interfaced with PIC16F877A microcontroller and wirelessly communication is achieved by using Wi-
Fi. The deployed sensors in the fields are connected to the microcontroller through RS232 protocol.
System has two modes, manual mode and automatic mode. In manual mode upon analysing live
data the farmer decides when to turn ON and OFF the motor. In automatic mode if sensed data
exceeds threshold value, the buzzer is triggered, LED starts blinking, and a notification is sent to
farmers via SMS and motor is switched OFF automatically. A detailed description is made available
to farmer via an android application [18].
[19] Suggested IoT based system that facilitates the water management, crop monitoring and
pesticides control. The system has two section agro logger and cloud interface with mobile
application. The agro logger comprises of Arduino mini pro microcontroller board, five sensors
(LM35 temperature sensor, moisture sensor, barometric pressure sensor, humidity sensor and light
sensor) and actuators (consists of sprinkler irrigation valve, fertilizer controlling valve, humidity
water spray valve) and these are all connected with Xively (an IoT open source platform enabling
developers to connect sensor information to the Web and to shape their own applications on it) via
Wi-Fi wireless communication module. Two modes of operations are used in this system; manual
mode and auto mode. In manual mode user has to operate sprinkler irrigation valve, fertilization
supplements and water spray valve and in auto mode these activities performed by the system. If the
sensed information crosses the predefined value heater or fan will be turned ON/OFF. Water
consumption is control via Android app in manual mode.
[20] Presented an intelligent irrigation system to control and screen the drips. Wireless sensors
network based on ZigBee are used to monitor the water level. The sensors information transmit to
cloud via gateway. The cloud data is available for the user via android application. Wireless
monitoring of field irrigation system reduces human intervention and allows remote monitoring and
controlling via phone. The approach adopted by [20] proposed a wireless sensor network to control
and monitor the drip irrigation via mobile phone. The system helps to increase the quality and the
quantity of field with minimum human involvement. It comprises of two wireless sensor nodes,
Node1 and Node2. Each node has M116 water level sensor, LM393 moisture senor, DHT11 humidity
and temperature sensor, Atmega328 microcontroller and a relay. Sensed values are sent to master
node via ZigBee. Data stored and compare with reference value according to crop, Apache Tomcat
HTTP web server hosted on cloud. Action sent to respective node and microcontroller, to control the
relay to switching ON/OFF. In the manual mode, the proposed system will update the user with real
time parameters of ground (fields) and the actions are let to the users to perform.
A smart framework [21] proposed to optimize the use of water and assist the famers to monitor
their fields remotely without visiting their lands. System consists of two sensors, water level sensor
and soil moisture sensor to monitor the moisture in soil. Sensed values transmit to ThingSpeak cloud
via ESP8266 Wi-Fi module. Talkback is created that makes commands whether water the plants or
not.
Alipio, M et al. proposed an approach in [22] aiming to control crops parameters and produce
high Quality of crops using IoT based smart hydroponics farming. Hydroponics is a procedure of
growing plants in water containing dissolved nutrients. Precision agriculture (PA) used to improve

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agriculture process by continuous plant monitoring and precise dealing that increased the quality,
quantity, sustainability, and cost effectiveness of agricultural yield [22]. Hydroponics farm combined
with sensors that gather and monitor plant parameters from the physical environment. The
accumulated sensor data is then fed into Bayesian Network (BN) model data that classifies and
predicts actuator levels [22]. A web interface is developed through a cloud platform to access
remotely [22]. The reliability and improvements of proposed system outperformed the existing
manual approach [22]. The proposed sensor network in [22] consists of five sensors that monitor
different parameters required for plant growth namely pH level (PH), electrical conductivity (EC),
relative humidity (RH), light intensity (LI), and water temperature (WT). The sensors used in [22] are
associated to RPi for correct data ensuring, the accuracy of each sensor is examined. Light bulb,
humidifier and motor pumps also act as actuator to adjust light intensity, humidity, and draw water
and liquid solution into the potholes respectively. Sensors, connected with Arduino Uno and RPi,
gather data from the physical hydroponics farm environment. Subsequently, gathered information is
transmitting to the cloud service platform (ThinkSpeak) through the Internet. Real-time series charts
are also available for user via web interface for remote monitoring. The web interface provides
automatic as well as manual options to set response against upcoming events. In the manual case,
user has to choose manual adjustment based on user’s knowledge, otherwise the system will use the
prediction model created based on BN algorithm to control all the actuations of the farm. The BN
model utilizes data constantly gathered for 27 days (24 h per day) which resulted to a total of 6,881
datasets (outliers omitted). From this available dataset, 5,505 instances are used as training set and
the remaining 1,377 instances are used as testing dataset. They created the network classification
model based on the 5,505 training dataset and gained 84.53% accuracy after model validation. Based
on prediction, the automatic control crop yield was found better than manual control by 20-60%.
An alternative and innovative approach presented by [23] is a model, AgriPrediction, aiming to
increase the yield of agricultural via the application of WSN technology, mobile computing, and
forecast strategies and helps the agricultural producer in the decision making about when to act, so
the rancher can take helpful actions timely as soon as possible. The AgriPrediction model proposed
by [23] is an end to end prototype model, not only obtaining real time data of soil moisture,
temperature and air pressure, but also provide data prediction and details about battery health. The
model consists of AgriMeasure, LoRaLPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) gateway and
AgriPrediction Server. Agri Measures mainly responsible for data collection from sensors, processing
(microcontroller such as Arduino) and LoRa transmitter. The process data is transmitted via LoRa to
a LoRaLPWAN gateway, the gateway in turn transmits that data to AgriPrediction Server. The
AgriPrediction Server uses Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model for a
predictive instrument or being classified as a scalable solution according to the necessities of crops.
In case of any abnormalities against set threshold, an alarm event can be triggered and notifies the
farmer via his/her cell phone. The AgriPrediction model applied on arugula cultivation and a gain of
17.94% were observed concerning leaf expansion and 14.29% in terms of weight in comparison with
traditional cultivation technique.
A unique approach using multilevel parameter optimized feature selection algorithm
incorporating with IoT and Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) is proposed in [24]. The impetus arose
by realising the act that conventional judgmental analysis is not enough for selection of remedial
options to counter the Plant Diseases (PD) and Nutrient Deficiency (ND) to enhance the fields [24].
To tackle such issues or yields enhancement while keeping the same resources, [24] established a
remote monitoring of PD, ND alongside of other parameters such as humidity and temperature.
These ready to view information will help to decide the quantity of fertilizer as imbalanced supply
of fertilizer may end up with reduced yields as well as hazardous to health at consumers (human and
animal) end [24]. The said system is separated into three phase’s image processing, feature Subset
Selection (SS) by using Genetic Algorithm (GA) and classification. In phase one, the images are
captured via smart phone or any digital camera. Humidity and temperature sensors are interacted
with Arduino and the images are transferred to Arduino via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. The collected data
along leaf image features points are stored in a database. Data normalization step carried out
followed by colour and texture features extractions of the obtained images. In phase two GA is used

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for optimal SS prior to optimal features using multilevel parameters optimization techniques. Phase
three deals with classification of PD and ND using ELM classifiers, performs accuracy and
comparative analysis of classification previously carried out by ELM based on all extracted optimal
features subset. The subsequently it generates reports to the end user, in this case farmers, about PD
or ND classification and quantity of fertilizer to be supplied to specific field. The proposed model
was applied against a standard high dimensional biomedical dataset as well as for real time leaf
disease dataset which delivers 9.52% and 5.71% perfection in the classification accuracy by
minimizing 58.50% and 72.73% features respectively. Simulation results validated that IGA-ELM is
proficient to deal optimization, uncertainty and supervised binary classification problems with
improved classification accuracy even though decreased the number of features.
The paper [25] focused on IoT based water management and conserving system so that water
can be reuse in an effective manner in farming when required. Proposed framework consists of a
plastic tray, soil, concrete and coriander seeds. Soil is placed on tray in a spilt way. At the bottom of
the slopped farm, water gets together. When the plants absorb the water as much as needed, excess
water move down the slopped farm. Excess water that is collected at the lower end of the farm reused
by plants. Moisture sensor is placed in farm to detect the presence and requirement of water.
Watering to the filed or farm based on moisture value (Predefined threshold value). Pump is installed
coupled with moisture sensor in reservoir. When the water required for plants, moisture sensor value
goes below the threshold and pump automatically waters the farm. In this way there is no need of
manual control on the field and it reduces the farmer’s burden. Water level detector, temperature
and humidity sensor are also installed in reservoir and water level sensor helps to switch off the
pump to control the wastage of water. Wi-Fi module is used for communication. Status of the farm
is presented on LCD so farmer can view.

3. Discussion and Analysis

The approach presented in [2] uses (MMS) technology to send captured images to farmer to
provide the information about temperature and humidity (in air) of fields. The use of MMS increases
the cost per message transmission. System can be made smarter by inclusion of automatic decision
support system. In addition to the above, automatic irrigation based on the analytics could made it
even smarter and utilizes maximum potential of IoT.
[3] Uses Temperature and soil moisture sensors to monitor the water supplement. Historical
data is used to control the quantity of water. Threshold value may be varying from crop to crop. Data
acquisition is done by using IC3208. RPi is used as a gateway to transmit sensor data to cloud
database via Wi-Fi. Totally automatic system also delivers real time data about temperature and
moisture in soil of fields.
[4] Uses single sensor and the purpose of this system is to decrease the wastage of resources
(water, labour) and increase yields. System presented in [3] [4] can be improved by adding humidity
sensor (humidity in air), pH sensor, water level sensor and weather monitoring sensor, GPS
technology for a geographical area identification. Data transfer resolution is not mentioned.
Implementation of machine learning (ML) will further make the system smart and automate.
The IoT based smart stick is presented in [5], which is equipped with Arduino Mega 2560
augmented with moisture sensor and temperature sensor to monitor temperature and moisture
powered by solar panel as well as battery (2200mAh; 11.2V). The action against real time data is let
to the user to do it manually. The functionality of stick can be enhanced by adding more sensors such
as pH or fertilization requirements, PIR or microbe level movement sensor and CO2 sensors for air
quality and a GPS sensor for identifying the sector in the fields. Automatic relative appliance such as
water pump, urea supplement actuation based on ML.
[6] Consists of WSAN based system to assess the need of irrigation for plants. To make the
system more smart and intelligent ML can be incorporated with this.
An indoor IoT based farming is discussed in [7], where user is updated via smart phone about
temperature, humidity and soil pH value. The sensor data are sent to client’s mobile through
Bluetooth. Again, the actions and decisions are let on to user side to decide upon viewing the instant

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data. The action could be the amount of fertilization and water supply to the field. The system scope
only covers indoor farming and further the system has lack of automated decision support system.
The system presented in [9] monitors soil pH, temperature and humidity. Framework can be
improved by adding other sensors like water level and GPS sensors. ML techniques could be
implemented to learn the activity pattern related to turning on and off actuators against changing
ambient parameter and provide suggestions for crops monitoring.
The system presented in [10] is an approach to get real time access to soil humidity, moisture,
temperature and water level via mobile phone application. ML could be implemented to lessen the
farmer’s burden and making suggestions and predictions based on the historical data in automated
manner.
An IoT based smart framework to control the greenhouse agriculture is discussed in [11], which
is used to observe the greenhouse parameters such as moisture content of soil, temperature, CO2 and
light for bell pepper plant. Smart analytical design could enhance by prediction early in time.
The technique used in [12] is a precise water supplement approach for an optimal use of water
reservoir. Again, the scope is limited to water management. The scope could be winded by adding
other sensor and exploited the big data to get activity patterns and automate the actions against any
change in the ambient parameters.
The investigation carried out by [13] aims at automating the water management for farming.
The system is designed considering the controlled indoor test bed environment. Thus, the design
issues will emerge if deployed in real fields. Aside from water management, monitoring the weather
conditions, humidity and temperature coupling with machine learning will make it smarter. Further,
the water management could be more sophisticated if considering droplets water supplement
technology or sprinkles or smart drains instead of just turning on and off the water pump.
[14] Has proposed a smart framework based on wireless network using soil moisture, humidity
and temperature sensors, RPi 3 as a gateway. The downside of [14] lies, where the decision-making
part solely rely on farmer sides it would be more efficient in future to make decision making process
automated using big data analytics.
[15] Proposed an agriculture system in which farmer plan irrigation scheduling for his farm
through an android application (which allows the farmer or end user to give input based on which
the watering to be controlled). The presented system still relies on farmer to act upon the notification
generated by the system to farmer’s smart phone, it could be completely automatic based on previous
farmer manual practice.
[16] Proposed a remote-control robot system that performs different tasks like weeding,
spraying, moisture detection, animal and bird frightening, smart irrigation with smart control and
smart warehouse management (temperature and humidity maintenance and theft detection). ZigBee
is used for communication. GPS based remote control system that is presented in [16] can be
improved by implementing machine learning.
Although system presented in [17] [19][20] are user friendly, smart and minimising labour and
hence cost, ML should be implemented on this to make system intelligent.
The work carried out in [18] can also be enhanced by adding sensor for monitoring soil quality
for precise fertilization supplement and further can be incorporated with ML for smart automation.
The main purpose of [21] is to reduce the farmer’s effort and help them to monitor and irrigate
their fields. How to perform a system in [21] it should be explained in the form of analytics. ML
should implement for smart automation.
System presented in [22] consists of two modes manual and automatic based on sensors data.
Modules like camera and Bluetooth technology can be integrated in the system and deep learning
techniques can implemented for making the automatic mode more reliable and accurate in
predictions. Bayesian model is extremely computationally costly. This even holds true when the
network structure is already given. Furthermore, it tends to perform ineffectively on high
dimensional data and prey to dimensionality curse.
[23] Proposed an AgriPrediction framework based on LoRA and ARIMA prediction model. The
mobile application can be implemented for real time field monitoring to track crop status. Online
ARIMA production gives good results but tests should be carried out on the basis of complexity and

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computational time of online and offline ARIMA. A real time monitoring using smartphone will be
handier. Further, they system should consider more than one crops of different season.
[24] Proposed system is based on IoT and ELM (Extreme Learning Machine) for remote
monitoring of Plant diseases (PD), nutrient deficiency (ND), humidity and temperature. The
proposed model was applied against a standard high dimensional biomedical dataset as well as for
real time leaf disease dataset which provides 9.52% and 5.71% improvement in the classification
accuracy by decreasing 58.50% and 72.73% features respectively. Smart water management should
also be considered, further the scope is limited to grape disease.
[25] Proposed system is about the management of water in farming and helps the farmers to
reserve water for later use. This is only for small farms but it can be expand by using more number
of sensors (moisture sensors, temperature and humidity sensors because a single sensor is used for
certain distance) as we want more area we have to use more moisture sensors, temperature and
humidity sensors, reservoir and higher voltage capacity motor pump.
This review highlighted, diverse approaches that have been adopted for a specific and limited
objective and an improvement has been observed, but IoT based farming incorporation with big data
has not yet been fully exploited. The fusion of IoT and big data has a great potential to address a
global solution to the challenges of food, sustainable water management and other resources.
Subsequently, this combination has capability to create expert systems that will be used by regular
farmers as well as unexperienced users and yields maximum qualitative production. This will also
create a community where users can delegate their successful experiences to each other by simply
deploying their expert models and thus in turn promoting the farming. This paper is intended to lay
a platform for future researchers to take the innovation one step ahead.
Following table shows the comparison between different reviewed investigations.
Table 1. Architecture framework comparison of IoT-base farming systems
Reference Technologies used Pros Cons
[2] Microcontroller: CC3200 Chip, MCU - Sends the information - MMS adds extra cost
Communication Technologies: MMS, about humidity and - No automatic support system
Wi-Fi Module temperature in air of field to
Sensors: Camera, Temperature Sensor, farmer
Humidity Sensor - Uses MMS technology to
send captured images
[3] Microcontroller: RPi - Water supply is controlled - Data transfer resolution is not
Cloud server: Google Cloud based on the historical data mentioned
Sensors: Temperature Sensor, Soil - No intelligent support system
moisture Sensor
[4] Microcontroller: Arduino - Reduced the wastage of - Data transfer resolution is not
Cloud server: Web server water and labor mentioned
Communication Technologies: Wi-Fi - Threshold value is set to - No intelligent support system
Module control the water
Sensors: Moisture Sensor supplement
[5] Microcontroller: Arduino - Live monitoring facility - Manually control
Cloud server: ThingSpeak
Communication Technologies: Wi-Fi
Module
Sensors: Temperature Sensor, Soil
Moisture Sensor
[6] Microcontroller: MSP4305419A - Moisture measurement - No automatic support system
Cloud Based WSAN, Communication - Weather forecast
Technologies: ZigBee, GPRS - Irrigation based on the set
Sensors: Soil Moisture Sensor threshold value
[7] Microcontroller: STM32L152RE - Indoor system - Lack of automated decision
Communication Technologies: - Gives sensor information to support system
Bluetooth user on user’s phone via
Sensors: pH Sensor, Temperature Senor, Bluetooth
Humidity Sensor
[9] Microcontroller: MCP3008 - Suggestion facility about - No automatic support system
Communication Technologies: Wi-Fi irrigation and fertilization
Sensors: pH Sensor, Temperature Senor,
Humidity Sensor

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[10] Microcontroller: Node MCU V3 - Real time access to sensors - Lack of automated decision
Cloud server: ThingSpeak data via thingSpeak support system
Communication Technologies: Wi-Fi
Sensors: Soil Moisture Sensor,
Humidity Sensor, LM35 Temperature
Sensor, Water Level Sensor
[11] Microcontroller: Wi-Fi microcontroller - Controlling greenhouse - No intelligent support system
Cloud server: AWS doors/windows based on
Sensors: Temperature Sensor, Humidity predefined soil moisture
Sensor, Moisture Sensor, CO2 Sensor, value
Light Sensor
[12] Microcontroller: ESP8266 NodeMCU - Controlling the actions of - No automatic support system
Communication Technologies: MQTT motor pump(ON/OFF)
Protocol based on the threshold value
Sensors: Soil Moisture Senor, - MQTT protocol
Temperature Sensor, Humidity Sensor,
Ultrasonic Sensor
[13] Microcontroller: ATMEGA328P - Controlling the actions of - No sprinkles
Cloud server: Adafruit Server motor pump(ON/OFF) - No smart drains
Communication Technologies: Wi-Fi based on the threshold value - No automatic support system
Sensors: Soil Moisture Sensor
[14] Microcontroller: Arduino - Data regarding sensors - Decision making is rely on user
Sensors: Temperature Sensor, Humidity stored on server and user or farmer
Sensor, Soil Moisture Sensor can view via GUI application - No automatic support system
[15] Microcontroller: Arduino - Provide the facility to set - Manually control
Cloud server: Web server the irrigation scheduling - Lack of automatic support
Communication Technologies: Wi- according season by using system
Fi/3G/4G, GSM capability android application
Sensors: Temperature Sensor, Humidity - Warning notification
Sensor, Soil Moisture Sensor, Motion facility
Sensor
[16] Microcontroller: AVR - Remote control robot - No automatic support system
Communication Technologies: ZigBee system
Sensors: Ultrasonic Obstacle Sensor, - System has manual and
Motion detector, Light Sensor, automatic mode
Humidity Sensor, Temperature Sensor - Automatic control is based
on threshold value
[17] Microcontroller: R Pi 2 Model B - Mobile robot controlling - No automatic support system
Communication Technologies: ZigBee, spraying pesticides
Wi-Fi module - Switching ON/OFF the
Sensors: Humidity Sensor, Obstacle motor and scaring the
Sensor, pH Sensor, CO2 Sensor, Soil intruder
Moisture Sensor, Thermo Hygro Sensor,
UV Sensor, PIR Sensor
[18] Microcontroller: PIC16877A - GPS based remote - Lack of automated decision
Communication Technologies: Wi-Fi, monitoring support system
GSM Module - System has manual and
Sensors: Temperature Sensor, Moisture automatic mode
Sensor, PIR Sensor - Automatic control is based
on threshold value
[19] Microcontroller: Arduino Mini Pro - Facility of water - Lack of automated decision
Communication Technologies: Wi-Fi management support system
Module: - Crop monitoring and
Cloud server: Cloud Intefrace, Xively pesticides control
(central platform) - System has manual and
Sensors: Moisture Sensor, Temperature automatic mode
Sensor, Humidity Sensor, Pressure - Automatic control is based
Sensor, Light Sensor on threshold value
[20] Microcontroller: Atmega328 Cloud - Drip irrigation - No automatic support system
server: Apache Tomcat HTTP web - User can access android
server data via android application
Communication Technologies: ZigBee - System has manual and
Sensors: Humidity and Temperature automatic mode
Sensor, Moisture Sensor, Water Level - Automatic control is based
Sensor on threshold value

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[21] Microcontroller: Arduino UNO - Farmers can monitor their - Lack of automated decision
Cloud server: ThingSpeak fields remotely support system
Communication Technologies: Wi-Fi - Irrigation control system
Sensors: Water Level Sensor, Moisture
Sensor
[22] Microcontroller: Arduino - Hydroponic System - Extremely computationally
Cloud server: ThingSpeak - Bayesian Network Model expensive model
Sensors: Light Intensity, pH, Electrical - System has manual and
Conductivity, Water Temperature, automatic mode
Relative Humidity
[23] Microcontroller: ATmega328 - LoRa Technology, ARIMA - No mobile application for real
Sensors: Temperature, Humidity, pH, Prediction Model time monitoring
Luminosity, Solar Radiation, Soil
Electrical Conductivity, Plant
Chlorophy11
[24] Microcontroller: Arduino - Feature Subset Selection - Lack of water management
Communication Technologies: Algorithm system
Bluetooth or Wi-Fi - Improved Genetic
Sensors: Temperature, Humidity Algorithm- ELM classifier
(IGA-ELM)
- Feature Extraction
[25] Microcontroller: Arduino - Water management and - No automatic support system
Communication Technologies: Wi-Fi water conserving system
module
Sensors: Soil moisture sensor,
Temperature and humidity sensor

4. Conclusion
In this paper, the IoT based farming is reviewed adopted by many researchers alongside
technologies implementation and a brief analysis, advantages, and suggestions for enhancements are
outlined. Farming issues related to precise and automated irrigation, fertilization to increase the
yields to meet the challenges of food to an increasing world population with declining arable lands
and thus minimize the human intervention and labour are major challenges faced by farmers in
underdeveloped areas. In summary, the IoT based farming is yet not been exploited fully to address
the challenges of food to an increasing world population with declining arable lands and thus
minimize the human intervention and labour. IoT based farming incorporation with big data has
potential to present a global solution to indoor as well as arable farming. IoT based farming is a broad
development prospect of one of the highest technologies. It combines sensor, embedded computing,
modern network as well as wireless communication and distributed information processing
technologies to provide us with a new way to obtain enormous data to analyses deeply and automate
the entire farming system for a better quality and quantity yields. The purpose of this paper is to
succinctly review most recent techniques and technologies progress in IoT based farming to assist
researchers to emerge a global solution of an IoT based Farming.

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