Internet of Things in Digital Agriculture

A special issue of Smart Cities (ISSN 2624-6511). This special issue belongs to the section "Smart Urban Agriculture".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2021) | Viewed by 9419

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Computer and Information Technology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
Interests: sustainability; digital agriculture; Internet of Things

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

To meet the exceedingly increasing food demands of the world, it is imperative to utilize digital agriculture to its fullest extent for an improved and cost-efficient crop production method through timely decision making and conserving natural resources. To that end, it is vital to achieve a ubiquitous connectivity on farms using Internet of Things and Underground Wireless Communications. 

The Internet of Underground Things can be classified into various categories. Some of them, for example, include environment monitoring, such as digital agriculture and landslide monitoring. Digital agriculture is defined by International Society of Precision Agriculture (ISPA) as a management strategy that gathers, processes, and analyzes temporal, spatial, and individual data and combines them with other information to support management decisions according to estimated variability for improved resource use efficiency, productivity, quality, profitability, and sustainability of agricultural production. The communication medium in the Internet of Things in Digital Agriculture is significantly different from that of conventional wireless networks. Therefore, signal propagation in a soil medium needs further empirical investigations and modeling. In this regard, energy-efficient sensing and underground electromagnetic (EM) wave propagation systems are needed in the field of digital agriculture. Moreover, there is a lack of detailed measurements for wireless underground channel. Many challenges exist, experienced in the development of power-efficient underground communication, which also hinders the protocol development in IoT at higher layers.

The aim of this Special Issue is to solicit papers from academia and industry researchers with original and innovative works on all aspects of Internet of Things in Digital Agriculture, including IoT sensing and wireless communications systems, characterization of soil medium (e.g., soil texture and moisture and irregular soil surfaces), antenna radiations considering burial depth, antenna design, and operating frequency, and studies of spatiotemporal factors of a field leading to a unique correlation of the communication system with digital agriculture. Submissions should be original papers and should not be under consideration in other publications. All manuscripts will be peer-reviewed. For further information, please contact the Chief Guest Editor, Abdul Salam.

Dr. Abdul Salam
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Smart Cities is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Digital agriculture
  • Internet of Things
  • Wireless Underground Communications
  • Soil sensing
  • Channel modeling
  • Subsurface antennas

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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33 pages, 2631 KiB  
Article
Zenneck Waves in Decision Agriculture: An Empirical Verification and Application in EM-Based Underground Wireless Power Transfer
by Usman Raza and Abdul Salam
Smart Cities 2020, 3(2), 308-340; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities3020017 - 6 May 2020
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 5156
Abstract
In this article, the results of experiments for the observation of Zenneck surface waves in sub GHz frequency range using dipole antennas are presented. Experiments are conducted over three different soils for communications distances of up to 1 m. This empirical analysis confirms [...] Read more.
In this article, the results of experiments for the observation of Zenneck surface waves in sub GHz frequency range using dipole antennas are presented. Experiments are conducted over three different soils for communications distances of up to 1 m. This empirical analysis confirms the existence of Zenneck waves over the soil surface. Through the power delay profile (PDP) analysis, it has been shown that other subsurface components exhibit rapid decay as compared to the Zenneck waves. A potential application of the Zenneck waves for energy transmission in the area of decision agriculture is explored. Accordingly, a novel wireless through-the-soil power transfer application using Zenneck surface waves in electromagnetic (EM) based wireless underground communications is developed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things in Digital Agriculture)
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Review

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49 pages, 1476 KiB  
Review
A Survey on Subsurface Signal Propagation
by Usman Raza and Abdul Salam
Smart Cities 2020, 3(4), 1513-1561; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities3040072 - 10 Dec 2020
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3698
Abstract
Wireless Underground Communication (WUC) is an emerging field that is being developed continuously. It provides secure mechanism of deploying nodes underground which shields them from any outside temperament or harsh weather conditions. This paper works towards introducing WUC and give a detail overview [...] Read more.
Wireless Underground Communication (WUC) is an emerging field that is being developed continuously. It provides secure mechanism of deploying nodes underground which shields them from any outside temperament or harsh weather conditions. This paper works towards introducing WUC and give a detail overview of WUC. It discusses system architecture of WUC along with the anatomy of the underground sensor motes deployed in WUC systems. It also compares Over-the-Air and Underground and highlights the major differences between the both type of channels. Since, UG communication is an evolving field, this paper also presents the evolution of the field along with the components and example UG wireless communication systems. Finally, the current research challenges of the system are presented for further improvement of the WUCs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things in Digital Agriculture)
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