IRRISENS: An IoT Platform Based on Microservices Applied in Commercial-Scale Crops Working in a Multi-Cloud...

Area of Science:

• Agricultural Technology
• Computer Science
• Environmental Science

Background:

• Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and forecasting technologies offer numerous applications across sectors, including agriculture for crop management.
• Previous research on agricultural IoT has primarily focused on small-scale or controlled environments, highlighting a need for commercial-scale implementation studies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the IRRISENS IoT platform, built on replicable microservices, for commercial-scale agricultural applications.
• To identify key requirements for IoT platforms operating at a commercial scale in agriculture.

Main Methods:

• The IRRISENS IoT platform was deployed and evaluated over one growing season on four commercial farms growing rice and cotton.
• The platform monitored soil, crop, and atmospheric parameters, interacted with cloud services for irrigation scheduling, and assessed its performance against identified requirements.

Main Results:

• The IRRISENS platform demonstrated robustness against intermittent and critical failures, ensuring uninterrupted operation across monitored sites.
• The microservice architecture effectively handled data heterogeneity and processing/storage overloads without performance degradation.
• Data isolation was maintained, ensuring user confidentiality, a critical factor for commercial farms.

Conclusions:

• Five essential requirements for commercial-scale agricultural IoT platforms were identified: scalability, flexibility, heterogeneity, robustness, and security.
• The microservice-based IRRISENS platform successfully addressed these requirements, proving its viability for large-scale agricultural irrigation management.