IoT Middleware Solutions for Arable Crops and Livestock Farming

The full automation of agricultural production systems, involving unmanned operations and autonomous decision support systems through their dynamic integration into the Internet of Things (IoT), may represent a comprehensive approach toward Agriculture 5.0, provided that it will be possible to manage, process, and share the large amount of heterogeneous raw data acquired by wireless sensor and actuator network (WSAN) on arable farms and livestock facilities. This chapter examines this topic, introducing a cloud-based middleware solution for the development of an IoT-integrated system, characterized by properties such as interconnectivity, scalability, flexibility, and interoperability. In particular, the architecture of a system that makes usage of cloud computing resources and is based on a multi-level hierarchical structure is proposed, with focus on the context awareness function performed in the middleware layer. To justify the solution, the system was evaluated in terms of computational performance as well as its coherence, consistency, and effectiveness in two case studies regarding an arable cultivation and a livestock farming facility.