| Agricultural Internet of Things(Ag-IoT)is a hotspot in agricultural research and has significant meanings to the development of information agriculture.In this research,we proposed a new framework of software platform for the Ag-IoT,monitoring and managing crop growth in farmland.The framework was designed with software engineering approaches and integrated Geographic Information System(GIS)technology,web technology,and cloud service technology.The hardware of the Ag-IoT in this research integrates two types of sensors,developed by Nanjing Agricultural University,for monitoring status of crop growth and environment.These sensors collect different data with different data structures.And multiple data structures increase the difficulty in data integration with the relational database technology.Besides,Ag-IoT data is collected with the precise spatial position and time.And spatiotemporal information is the critical in the applications.Moreover,it is not economical to monitoring the crops in the field everywhere,but applicable to install several sensors in the one field.Hence,the monitoring data is spatial discrete,and should be interpolated to be spatial continuous with a practical approach for regional applications.Also,because of the mechanism of the sensors,only data collected between 10:00am and 2:00pm in the sunny days is correct.And much of the raw data in the database is exceptional and should be corrected.In addition,the platform should meet the requirements of different users with different devices,e.g.cell phone,personal computer,or tablet.The platform must be compatible with these devices,and the existed framework of the platform should be refined.Geographic Information System(GIS)is a well-developed system framework for the software based on spatial data.And spatial database technology is efficient in storing,managing and searching spatial data,as well as the map is a user-friendly in visualizing spatial data.Besides,the geo-processing functions of GIS realize the regional applications based on the spatial discrete data.Furthermore,the framework based on cloud services will make the platform compatible to different devices by using the same services.With the foregoing considerations,we developed the platform by using WebGIS and cloud services.The platform provides multifunctional Ag-IoT software for managing and visualizing regional monitoring data and crop growth diagnosis and regulation.The platform has unified user management framework and software standards to make the system extendable and customizable.The performance of platform operation shows that:our design makes a maintainable platform for the application of Ag-IoT on regional field.The approach of correcting exceptional data using online weather service keeps accuracy of system data.Meanwhile,the introduction of the Geo-services and Geo-processing services in the platform facilitates the spatial management of monitoring data and extends the application from a point site to a region area.Furthermore,the combination of data visualization method Map-Table-Chart(MTC)and diagnosis and regulation models refines the user interface and the functions of decision support.This study is an exploration of applying Ag-IoT on regional field,and the proposed system design provides a stable platform for collecting,managing,analyzing and using the data of the Ag-IoT on regional field.The platform has been on line since 2012,and has 17 subsystems in it now.The subsystems are deployed for all demonstration bases,which distributes in Jiangsu,Jiangxi,Henan,Shandong,and Hebei provinces.The platform works well in data collection,data management,data analysis and applications.The performance the platform shows that the architecture of the system accords with the requirements of the crop growth monitoring and intelligence management.The proposed platform provides a stable tool for monitoring and managing crop growth,and it is well designed software for the application of Ag-IoT in farmland. |
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