Overview of Edge Computing in the Agricultural Internet of Things: Key Technologies, Applications, Challenges

The application of the Internet of Things in agricultural development usually occurs via a monitoring network that consists of a large number of sensor nodes, thus gradually transforming agriculture from a human-oriented and single-machine-centric production model to an information- and software-centric production model. Due to the large area coverage of agriculture and the variety of production objects, if all farmland perception information is gathered into the cloud server, the server will exert greater pressure on the network, which reduces the speed of response to event processing. This problem may be perfectly solved by the recent emergence of Edge computing, which can share the load of the cloud server and reduce the delay. Edge computing has prospects in agricultural applications, such as pest identification, safety traceability of agricultural products, unmanned agricultural machinery, agricultural technology promotion, and intelligent management. The application of the Agricultural Internet of Things integrates artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and blockchain and Virtual/Augmented Reality technologies. This paper primarily reviews the application of Edge computing in the Agricultural Internet of Things and investigates the combination of Edge computing and Artificial Intelligence, blockchain and Virtual/Augmented reality technology. The challenges of Edge computing task allocation, data processing, privacy protection and security, and service stability in agriculture are reviewed. The future development direction of Edge computing in the Agricultural Internet of Things is predicted.