Role of Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Sensor Devices in Smart Agriculture: A Survey

Agriculture is affected by many factors such as environmental changes, natural disasters, soil erosion, water irrigation, and pesticide control. All these factors will affect the yield of the crop. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a unique technology that will bind the physical components to modernize various domains. Agriculture can be carried out from anywhere, at any time, through IoT. The IoT - based framework is designed to automate the control and monitoring processes in agriculture without requiring human intervention. IoT sensors are used in specialized agricultural applications such as soil moisture measurement, nutrient levels, crop forecasting, pesticide management, and water irrigation. The difficulty faced by the researchers is identifying suitable sensors based on the need of the application. This difficulty was overcome by discussing the importance of IoT in agriculture and even the author's thoughts on various sensor devices used in smart agriculture. This survey stands to aid the prospective investigators in identifying appropriate IoT sensors, the importance of IoT in agriculture, and the technologies based on application requirements.