Hybrid Sensing Platform for IoT-Based Precision Agriculture

Abstract

Precision agriculture (PA) is the field that deals with the fine-tuned management of crops to increase crop yield, augment profitability, and conserve the environment. Existing Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for PA are typically divided in terms of their use of either aerial sensing using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or ground-based sensing approaches. Ground-based sensing provides high data accuracy, but it involves large grids of ground-based sensors with high operational costs and complexity. On the other hand, while the cost of aerial sensing is much lower than ground-based sensing alternatives, the data collected via aerial sensing are less accurate and cover a smaller period than ground-based sensing data. Despite the contrasting virtues and limitations of these two sensing approaches, there are currently no hybrid sensing IoT solutions that combine aerial and ground-based sensing to ensure high data accuracy at a low cost. In this paper, we propose a Hybrid Sensing Platform (HSP) for PA—an IoT platform that combines a small number of ground-based sensors with aerial sensors to improve aerial data accuracy and at the same time reduce ground-based sensing costs.