Precision Farming: Sensor Analytics

The role of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in agriculture has become prominent as part of the precision farming initiative. In the future, multiple WSN systems will be deployed on every farm. Accurate and timely analyses of the data collected by these systems will become paramount for increasing efficiency and sustainability of farming. Conventionally, analyzing monitoring data is considered to be beyond WSN capabilities, and, therefore, carried out remotely. Meanwhile, in recent years, complexity of the tasks performed by WSNs has been constantly increasing. Modern wireless sensors possess computational capacity sufficient for certain data-analytics functionality. This article overviews modern WSN functionality that incorporates a certain level of intelligence, while the authors explore challenges and potential benefits of WSN-based analytics in the scope of precision farming.