This blog post would be the last blog of my research program.

So, coming on the topic as i have concluded that, With uses of appropriate and valid technologies, efficiency of the system could be achieved and all the different factors can be controlled by switching the techniques and using different combination for different types of the scenarios.

Through this subject ITC571 I have learnt very important insights like:

• Able to conduct a research by following well structured research plan.
• Depth and the evolution of IoT.
• Upcoming technologies.
• Implementation of successful wireless networks.
• Architecture of the wireless sensor system using cluster topology.
• Importance of SWORD algorithm.
• Zigbee and other technologies usability.

I would like to thank Dr Mansoor Raza for guiding me through the time of the research and teaching me ways of conducting a high quality and rich methodologies of conducting a research.

I am about to wrap up the research so i thought sharing my finding out of the whole research.

Interestingly, I have explored the flaws and major successful platforms that could actually contribute to increase or monitor the efficiency of the IoT in farming.

Findings for the efficiency of the system has,

Zigbee being most widely and most compatible technology network that is used with sensor typologies or infusion with other technologies to give out the best results. As seen from the analysis, it has proven to be the most secure technology with high encryption of the data that reduce the security cost of the system overall. And Wi-Fi with medium efficiency and low accuracy proved to be the less used and non-reliable technology used for precision farming. On the other hand Bluetooth being low cost technology with very low energy consumption could be used for very short distance communication of sensor nodes. And WiMAX being very expensive technology also limits its use as it cannot prove to be efficient is terms of cost.

Final report and presentation will be covering the most important topics of the research which are extremely important for the understanding that I want to present. I have tried to present the final report in most elaborated yet tried to keep it short and to the point and covering 3 literature reviews for that.

Starts from the basic explanation of the IoT framework and leads to the core technologies that have been researched to find the efficiency of the system.

Topics are as follow:

• WSN
• Zigbee
• SWORD
• Low power consumption
• Low-cost High efficiency
• Energy management

Based on the discussion of these topics, I have concluded the facts that are required to finalize the research in the papers for assessment 4.

As well as, prepared the PPT of the final report where the research is summarized in a descriptive form for the presentation.

After completion of my annotated bibliography assessment submission. I would like to share the synopsis that i am going to present in the final report.

My final synopsis covers the important domains as follow;

• Review of a technological framework
• Algorithms of reducing power consumption
• Increasing the productivity of the system
• Issues of energy consumption
• Increasing the overall systems efficiency .

The methodology used in completing this research is based on mixed methodology approach, through case studies the research was quantitative as well. Result could be based on the finding of this research from different domains but a well-defined low-cost, low-energy consumption model as well as accurate and eco-friendly systems could be developed in the field of agriculture, whereas, further reducing the cost of the hardware would be ever challenging domain.

Agriculture sector is heading towards a future where automation is getting necessity to fulfill the needs of the growing population, bigger farms need to have automated ecological environment where energy efficient low cost wireless networks communicate efficiently with a top notch accuracy. With advancement in the technology the IoT is getting it way to the length and breadth of the farm across the globe with much better efficiency and providing huge opportunity for budding farmers, as technology being the interface young generation can approach farming in a technical as well as much easier way.

In week 7 , I have conducted some of the most useful researches, that could contribute in my understanding and could prove conclusion to the researched article.

The author made his research on increasing the durability and expanding the life of the wireless sensors. By proposing power efficient plans where power consumption are decreased and further increasing the life of sensor and nodes by. Author has introduced an algorithm SWORD by which power consumption of sensors and nodes could be reduced by 99.48% by using sleep and wake algorithm. Author has explained steps of SWORD algorithm as well as with a flow chart. Author has determined length of data packet by using a ZigBee protocol and then found an equation to calculate the power consumption. Author demonstrated by using SWORD algorithm in an experiment to show prolonged energy of battery by 1093 days.

Reference:

Jawad, H., Nordin, R., Gharghan, S., Jawad, A., Ismail, M., & Abu-AlShaeer, M. (2018). Power Reduction with Sleep/Wake on Redundant Data (SWORD) in a Wireless Sensor Network for Energy-Efficient Precision Agriculture. Sensors, 18(10), 3450. doi: 10.3390/s18103450

In week 6, I have learned more about the different technologies involved in the communication of the sensors in the farming and there characteristics.

The author has elaborated the fusion of agriculture with IT by introducing Wireless sensor network (WSN) for precision agriculture (PA) to increase the productivity and quality of the crops and soil as well as reducing water wastage. Author has classified WSN into various types and on basis of transmission & sensing power and its applications for different purposes. Technologies like ZigBee with less consumption and data rate is widely used whereas WiMAX has been suggested for longer distance. A study has also made on the future of IoT in agriculture by taking a case study on nanotechnology and Nano-Bio Sensors.

Reference:

Kumar, S., & Ilango, P. (2017). The Impact of Wireless Sensor Network in the Field of Precision Agriculture: A Review. Wireless Personal Communications, 98(1), 685-698. doi: 10.1007/s11277-017-4890-z

In this article, Titled as “Internet of things for smart agriculture: Technologies, practices and future direction”.

I have conducted my research and have learned about the basic frame work of the IoT in farming 6 layers and its implementation in the agriculture domain. Not limited to the framework only,  there are many different Technologies like IR, Bluetooth and cloud solutions have been explained in this paper, as well as extensively compared with some of the major cloud platforms.

As well as i have also learnt about the challenges and the obstacles for the IoT field in the farming domain.  As some of the major challenges and areas for improvement has been highlighted like sensors cost control, energy management, fault tolerance and maintenance.

Reference:

Ray, P. P. (2017). Internet of things for smart agriculture: Technologies, practices and future direction. Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments, 9(4), 395–420. doi: 10.3233/ais-170440

Started structuring my annotated bibliography in week 4.

In Annotated bibliography structure, we will be starting our refine research on selected researched articles and journals. We will provide summary, analysis and critiques to every researched paper in context to our research.  I have made by researches using CSU library and collecting all the important peer reviewed papers for my research. Here, i would like to elaborate the structure of my Annotated bibliography that have been proposed by our lecturer Dr Mansoor Raza.

Following this week, i will be updating my blogs with the progress made on different literature reviews for 3 papers.

Planning of the project has been created and and project proposal got structured. With project proposal, Gantt chart and WBS formation, I am sharing the plan and WBS in my blog.

Problem Domain:

Crop grows in the nature which is not stable and always changing ie dynamic. And to sustain in such environment it is important to keep up the productivity has become a challenge. To increase the productivity and reduce the risks in farming, the risks that farmers are facing these days it is required to understand and predict the crop performance. Crop performances like how a crop has performed in different kind of environment and under what circumstances.

With the introduction of IoT in farming it has become relatively productive. But still there are large gaps between technology and practicality of the system. There are many emerging challenges that need to be covered with the help of technologies. As well as there are technological challenges emerging too. Since the nature is dynamic so it is very important for the technology to be dynamic from hardware as well as the software side.

Major problems that farmer and technology is suffering from are:

• Expensive hardware
• Accuracy of sensors
• Data security
• Poor connectivity
• Image detection issues

To further narrow down my research, i have planned to make my research for Efficiency of the IoT in farming in terms of energy conservation and cost of the equipment.

The applications of technology in the field of agriculture are used to improve crop yields or quality and to reduce costs. The application of WSN in precision agriculture assists the farmers in a statistical manner, helping them make better and well informed decisions.  As well as major application of IoT has started with the monitoring of soil of the farmlands.

Monitoring plant and soil conditions is a simple use case—but it can lead to a fantastic return on investment for farmers. We’ve seen several great uses for agriculture IoT in this space like Sensing soil moisture and nutrients, controlling water usage for optimal plant growth, determining custom fertilizer profiles based on soil chemistry, determining the optimal time to plant and harvest and reporting weather conditions.

With such wide range of applications some up front questions arises which need to be explored to understand the IoT in farming more clearly Like;

•  What will be the efficiency of the system like sensors, network?
•  What are the cost of implementation ?
• What will be the  monitoring area that would be covered by application ?
• What will be the required range of the wireless sensors
• What will be the source of power for the equipment and the sensors ?
• How often is the data gathering required by the users ?
• What kind of sensors are there and there way of interfacing ?

My research would be based on the above questions.