Data Communication in Digital Agriculture

A typical IoT-based farm monitoring systemData transmission model involves the deployment of various sensors and digital devices at agricultural fields to collect soil, plant/livestock, and environmental data. The collected data is required to be transmitted to storage (cloud) servers for further processing and analysis. The data transmissionData transmission from sensors and digital devices to storage servers is possible through various wireless (BluetoothBluetooth, Wi-Fi, ZigbeeZigBee, etc.), cellular (2/3/4/5 G, LTE, LPWAN, etc.), satellite (Satellite Internet, GPSGlobal Positioning System (GPS), GISGlobal Information System (GIS), etc.), and wired (i.e., Broadband) communication technologies. Therefore, communication technologies are an integral and important part of Digital AgricultureDigital agriculture systems. The end-to-end data flow in a typical digital agricultureDigital agriculture system may involve different communication technologies at different stages of data transfer. Mainly the transmission of agricultural data (vital field parameters i.e., soil, crops, livestock, weather, etc.) from field sensors/devices to edge routers or gateways is based on wireless communicationWireless communication technologies. However, data transfer from edge routers/gateways to large-scale data centers is primarily dependent on Broadband technology. Each communication technology (protocol) has specific pros and cons over others and it is not easy to select the most suitable communication technologies for a particular digital agricultureDigital agriculture system (Avşar and Mowla, Ad Hoc Netw 136:102982, 2022). Therefore, at the design stage, it is crucial to consider the characteristics and capabilities of available communication technologies to fulfill the application-specific requirements of the digital agricultureDigital agriculture system. The characteristics, capabilities, and functionality perspectives of these wireless and wired communication technologies have been discussed below.