IoT and Fog Enabled Model for Saffron Cultivation in Precision Farming

With the increase in the number of smart devices, there will be rapid growth of data storage issues and also data processing speed will not match effectively with the requirements of a centralized cloud server repository. Mission-critical and sensitive applications like aircraft operations and control systems, online banking systems will need minimum latency and quick response time. To address these issues and provide cloud services available to the proximity of edge users without causing delays (like processing delays, network delays, etc.), the concept of fog computing came into existence. Fog computing makes real-time data available to mobile users without any delays close to the edge of the network. With the decline of saffron cultivation in the last decade due to numerous arid and climatic challenges, the Internet of Things (IoT) seems to be an impeccable solution for its cultivation. In this research contribution, a fog-assisted information model for saffron cultivation has been proposed which delivers information to all saffron cultivators as a cloud service using IoT and fog, thus eradicating the possibilities of latency and storage issues. Also, the services offered by the fog node using the ESP32 Wi-Fi module are discussed. To implement the proposed model, data gathered from sensor nodes is stored on the cloud and big data analytics is performed on collected data. Simultaneously, machine learning technology will be used to facilitate increased crop yield in making proper decisions for all the saffron cultivators in smart farming. The decline in research trends in the last decade using various parameters has also been presented.