Overview of IoT Basic Platforms for Precision Agriculture

Nowadays, more than ever, agriculture area has to face difficult challenges due to numerous technological transformations used for increasing productivity and products quality. Due to the extended growth in agricultural product use, farmers and big companies operating in the “Big Data” area invest in precision agriculture by using sensor networks, drones, satellites and GPS tracking systems. Agricultural plants are extremely sensitive to climate change such as higher temperatures and changes in the precipitation area increase the chance of disease occurrence, leading to crop damage and even irreversible destruction of plants. Current advances in Internet of things (IoT) and Cloud Computing have led to the development of new applications based on highly innovative and scalable service platforms. IoT solutions have great potential in assuring the quality and safety of agricultural products. The design and operation of a telemonitoring system for precision farming is mainly based on the use of IoT platforms and therefore, this paper briefly presents the main IoT platforms used in precision agriculture, highlighting at the same time their main advantages and disadvantages. This overview can be used as a basic tool for choosing an IoT platform solution for future telemonitoring systems.