A Drone-based IoT Approach to
Agriculture Automation and Increase Farm
Yield
Selvakumar Manickam
National Advanced IPv6 Center Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia.
selva@usm.my
Abstract— This paper proposes a smart agriculture system which
include of soil sampling, drone seeding, pesticide/fertilizers spraying
and farm condition monitoring through the application of IoT sensors
and drones for new farms and farms practicing crop rotation. Drone
will collect farm information such as soil humidity and pH value from
ground sensor where farmer pre-plug in the farm. The connection
between ground sensor and drone are using Zigbee due to its capability
of wide range connection. The collected data will then transmit to
gateway through LoRa and the information would then store in the
cloud as data storage and data analysis. Through the proposed
application we believe that the farming work is more automated and
crop yield rate will improve.
Keywords—Internet of Thing, Agriculture, Farm
I. INTRODUCTION
Food is the essential need for human being, and the ultimate
source to obtain food is through Agriculture. Agriculture is the
process of producing food, feed, fiber and many other desired
products by the cultivation of certain plants and the raising of
domesticated animals (livestock). [1]
In Agriculture, crop yield is the term we defined its output.
It is an important indicator to measure the yield of a crop per
unit area of land cultivation, and the seed generation of the plant
itself. Figure 1 shows the long-term wheat yields in Europe [2].
Figure 1: Long-Term Wheat Yield In Europe [2]
The mankind population had increased drastically from
3.032 billion to 7.53 billion from year of 1960 to 2017. [3] This
increased amount of population imposed to the statistic in
Figure 1. That said, the output of Agriculture directly
proportional to human population.
To support the skyrocketing population, an efficient of farm
management need to be study and implement. In this paper [4],
they suggested to perform rooftop farming. They scope on these
two area Nagdhungha and Birauta and their result shows that
the stormwater management cost can be reduced, but the
problem are can this implementation aplied to other places as
well? As the willingness of citizen is a must consider factor.
Hence, this paper will propose an idea of smart
agriculture system which include of action that farmer can
perform during pre-farming stages and farming stages.
II. BACKGROUND
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) or drone had become
cheaper in the market, this is because many control
functions can be implemented in software rather than
having to depend on expensive hardware [5][6].
There is various factor that can affect the crop yield rate
and it is hard and costly to solve in the past. With the
emerging in drone and sensor technology as well as the
network communication. Those issue shall mitigate now.
Smart farming and precision agriculture involve the
integration of advanced technologies into existing farming
practices in order to increase production efficiency and the
quality of agricultural products. As an added benefit, they
also improve the quality of life for farm workers by
reducing heavy labor and tedious tasks.
A. Bird Attack
Various paper and news shown that bird attack had
causing serious trouble to the farm. [7][8][9]. The issue not
only occurs now but it happened in ancient time as well. In
the past, people are using scarecrow to make bird scare. But
once the bird realized that it is static and post no harm, then
tragedy will happen to the farm. An alternate to tackle the
issue, farmer trained a falcon to scare away the bird, but the
training process is long and costly.[10][11]
One of the solutions from this paper is that [12], they
suggested to use a sudden loud sound, produced by propane
gas guns. But these solutions, is producing a constant noise
pollution.
Another article suggested to detect pest birds through
image recognition and generate random sound to scare the
birds away. [13]. In this article, stational speakers are used
and it is not scalable. Multiple station would have to be
installed in a large farm.
Thus, a drone with ultrasonic sensor and buzzer would
be the great solution to implement. Drones are mobile unit
so they could cover wide zone. A buzzer and ultrasonic
sensor are mount to the drone. Through ultrasonic sensor it
will detect when there is wildlife close to our farm. Once
wildlife is detected around the crops, the buzzer will start
beeping to scare animals away from crops. In addition to
the sound produced, birds are also scared the unknown
flying object approaching them as well.

B. Efficiency in Soil Sampling

On large farms, there are segmentation of zones with
different soil properties. A soil map with measured properties
is one of the important information for fertilizer prescription for
the farm and deciding the crop type in next farming season. The
common practice in analyze soil properties is to sample the soil
for analysis in laboratory. The analysis is charged per sample
and could be very expensive if sampled per square meter. So, it
is important to collect minimum amount of soil samples that is
enough for analysis.
A drone could be used to capture the soil color mapping to
form farm management zones [14]. Soil samples could be
collected from each farm management for analysis.
C. Seeding, Fertilizing and Pesticides Spraying Effectivity
Seeding effectivity is another major concern to farmer. In
the finding of this paper [15], it would take five hours to
walking an 80-acre soybean field. In regards of this, our paper
proposed to use a drone to plant seed in the farm. Similarly,
fertilizer and pesticides spraying could be done in much shorter
time using drones, eliminating the needs of human labor for
such tasks.
In addition to reducing farming workload, through
monitored plants health, fertilizer can be adjusted to optimum
amount, reducing fertilizer cost.
III. PROPOSED SYSTEM
A. System Overview
There are two phases in our proposed system, phase one,
which is pre-farming stage. In pre-farming stage, land tillage is
performed at first. Then, bare soil could be seen from aerial
vision. The drone will then take an aerial image of the farm
location. This give an overview to farmer, based on the
processed image, farmer know the actual size of the farm, and
thus the route of drone seeding can be planned accordingly.
Another service can provide in the pre-farming stage is soil
sampling. In this paper [14], they had demonstrated a protype
on the way to gather information from soil through aerial image
and augmented reality software. But their implement is using
image processing with AR technology which we don’t need in
our implementation. Thus, in our design we removed the AR
section and include the IoT capability.
In phase two, the drone is capable of gather the information
of the overall farm status from its sensors and ground based IoT
sensors and send the information to cloud service for data
storage and analytic. The information includes, the soil
humidity, pH value, farm temperature and wildlife.
Another service will implement in phase two are, drone self-
charging module. In this module, a capacitor in the drone will
detect the battery level, once the battery percentage is below the
certain threshold amount, drone is capable to fly to a base
station for self-charging.
For the communication protocol between ground
sensor and drone we proposed to use Zigbee, while the
communication between drone and gateway are LoRa.
Figure 2 demonstrate the block diagram of our proposed
system.
Figure 2: Smart Agriculture Block Diagram
B. Pre-farming (Soil Sampling)
The pH value is the key parameter when deciding which
seed need to plant, and the suitable fertilization formula to
use. But given the large size of the farm, it would be
overwhelmed and costly for the farmer to do decision.
Thus, soil sampling with aid of drone is necessary. A
drone will take an aerial image and through image
processing we can obtain soil map color. This aim of the
process is to break the big farm into sub region. Once we
can get the info in sub region, the farmer can send the soil
sample to laboratory for precise analysis. Figure 3 shown
the process of soil sampling.
Figure 3: Soil Sampling
C. Pre-farming (Drone Seeding)
As per mentioned in the problem statement, to plant a
seed in the farm is another tedious work to performed. Thus,
a drone seeding is needed to perform the action. In drone
seeding module, our proposed approach is that the drone
carries various type of seed, with the aid of 3D mapping our
farmer can planned a pre-planned route based on the input
from soil sampling. Thus, the seed will plant in the correct
region. Figure 4 shows the process mapping and Figure 5
shows the image illustration of drone seeding.
Figure 4: Seeding Figure 5: Seeding Illustration
D. Farm Monitoring
Farm monitoring are the core of our approach. In this
module, drone able to collect sensors data consisting of
humidity of soil and temperature of farm. From the data
collected, optimum amount of fertilizer and water is
calculated and supplied. Last, it needs to constantly
feedback NVDI images to cloud to perform normalized
difference vegetation index (NDVI) calculation. NDVI is
an algorithm used to determine crop health and growth
monitoring. Healthy vegetation (chlorophyll) reflects more
near-infrared (NIR) and green light compared to other
wavelengths. But it absorbs more red and blue light. This is
why our eyes see vegetation as the color green [16].
Equation 1 below shows the formula of NDVI.
NDVI = (NIR – Red) / (NIR + Red) ----------Equation (1)
IV. EQUIPMENT
In short, the higher the NDVI the greater the health of plant.
Low NDVI means low vegetation. Figure 6 shows the The basic equipment where needed for the proposed system
comparison of Real Color Image and NDVI Image. Thus, based are outlined in Table 1.
on the info return from NDVI, farmer can know which area
require “special treatment” for the fertilizer. Fertilizer amount
could be reduced at health area and more fertilizer could put on TABLE 1: EQUIPMENT NEEDED
less healthy area. Humidity sensor are used to determine the Current Sensor Monitor and optimize power drain,
moisture content. In our implementation, a humidity sensor safe charging of internal batteries.
would plug in the soil, they collect and transmit data to drone.
Detect fault condition within drone.
Ultrasonic sensor in this module are used to detect if any
bird close to farm, if they are close then the buzzer will “buzz” Humidity Sensor Plug in soil to detect soil humidity
to chase out the bird. Additionally, the data will transmit to level
farmer connected device to bring their awareness.
Temperature Provide overview of farm temperature
Sensor level.
Drone Provide GPS location, maintain flight
level.
HD Camera Provide Image for soil sampling
(1080p) analysis.
Figure 6: Comparison of Real Color Image and NDVI Image Servo Perform various function.
Spraying fertilizer.
E. Fertilizer and Pesticides Spraying Buzzer Produce beeping sound.
With the IoT solution, suitable fertilizer amount for
each farming zone are calculated. NVDI Sensor Collect NVDI wavelength light for
crop health assessment.
The task of spraying of fertilizer and pesticides are
scheduled by software, without need of human intervention. For the camera, we opted for 1080p as it provided best
At scheduled time, software set the drone to spray fertilizer feasibility in all class. 720p appear to be less detail while
and pesticides at the planned route. Aerial spraying by drones the transmission rate required for 4k is not feasible for the
has high efficiency, it could cover much bigger area than implementation.
done by human labor. By using drones, farmers avoid the risk
of heat stroke and poisoning. V. COMMUNICATION PROTOCOL
For the communication between ground sensor and
drone, we had done various research and finding are
F. Farming(Drone Charging) tabulate in Table 2. Per our finding, there is no specific
An autonomous charging solution are also proposed. A network can be used, it is purely depending on the size of
current sensor in drone can detect the battery level of a drone, the farm. If the farm size is smaller, the drone can fly lower
if the battery is fall under threshold percentage, then it will fly to collect the data as the range of BLE are shorter. If the
to a charging pad for charging. Since the charge panel is placed farm size is larger, then we recommended to use Zigbee as
outdoor, thus the charging pad should be water resistance it can provide up to 50m transmission rate.
(IP55). But in our implementation, we are using Zigbee as our
The charging data will transmit to cloud for storage and communication protocol. Zigbee uses 2.4GHz frequency
further analysis. The user can manage and monitor the data via to transmit low packet data. Moreover, it also shows a
API and graphical user interface (GUI). User can monitor the characteristic of larger transmission range over BLE.
heath of the battery and grant awareness if a battery
replacement needed. Figure 7 show an example of drone and
charging pad.

Figure 7: Drone and Charing Pad

 TABLE 2: NETWORK COMPARISON
Most BLE devices communicate with each other using a simple
point-to-point network topology enabling one-to-one device
communications. For example, a smartphone can connect to
multiple device such as speaker, smartwatch, heart rate monitor
and others but these devices cannot communicate among each
other. While in contrast, a mesh network has a many-to-many
topology. Each device would able to communicate with each
other in the mesh.
Zigbee is an IEEE802.15.4 based specification for suite of
high-level communication protocols used to create personal
area networks for data collection. A typical Zigbee mesh
network only require one coordinator is needed form Zigbee
network, the coordinator stores all the critical information about
the Zigbee network including encryption keys.
Zigbee Tree Network have interconnected Star network
operate in Beacon mode. The Coordinators and Routers
perform frame forwarding, and there are buffer frames among
IoT devices. The network is always stay “ON” to listen for
transmissions from nodes, the coordinator cannot sleep but the
device can sleep. All communications must go through
Coordinator/ Router.
For the communication between drones and ground station,
LoRa protocol is used. LoRa enables communication distance
of more than 10km in rural area. The maximum data transfer
rate is 300kbps. [17] To cater for the limited bandwidth, the
large volume data of HD images are indexed and stored on
drone, and only upload and mapped by software when it is
docked on station.
VI. DISCUSSION
In our approach, we had proposed a smart agriculture
system, through this system farmer can increase the crop yield
rate. The process includes of pre-planning and planning stage.
To compare our approach with previous work the best way is
to describe with a scenario.
Consider we have a wheat farm where it is just harvest, and
farmer would like to change the farm to corn farm. In the pre-
farming stage, they need to identify the pH of soil in different
sector in the farm and then use suitable fertilizer to provide
enough nutrient to the soil. Traditionally these need to be done
manually, but with the aid of drone we just need to take a
picture and perform software analysis the work effort would
reduce drastically.
After soil condition is addressed, drone seeding will then
perform respectively. Per finding, 80-acre farm would take
5 hours to walk but with the aid of drone, this would save a
lot of effort.
While in the farm monitoring stages, through IoT approach
we can easily collect and centralize the data and do analysis
on temperature, humidity and pH of farm. The correct
amount of fertilizer and water could spray to the farm.
Moreover, through the data analysis, farmer predict what
might happen in future and prepare solution for that.
Another great feature in our approach are self-charging, the
current sensor in the drone are able to detect if the battery
has lower than the threshold level, if it falls beyond that, the
drone will automatically fly to a charging station.
VII. FUTURE WORK
In our approach, we had proposed a complete system
to improve the efficiency of Agriculture through the aid of
drone and IoT. The process includes of pre-planning and
planning stage. The approach shall provide one-end
solution to farmer - from planning to harvesting. But the
adoption rate is one of the major issues that we could
thought. Farmer are used to the traditional pattern of
farming is unlikely to adapt to the new system.
Another concern is the cost and complexity of the
system. The system is a bundle of multiple applications
and require a few resources such as drones, cloud access,
and gateway infrastructure. Small farm owners are
unlikely to adopt the system due to ROI concern.
In future, an extended work that researcher could
looking into are joint the proposed system into blockchain.
Blockchain is able of keeping ledger of many types of
data, for example, purchase order, invoice, banking info
and many more.
Through this development, it would form a
revolutionary ecosystem of agriculture, imagine that a
system that is capable capture the current need and even
predict future demand.
VIII. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we had discussed the service and the
solution that would tackle the traditional farm issue.
Through the implementation, the workload and risk for
farmer shall reduce through the farming process. The
implementation shall show improvement in the crop yield
rate. Moreover, we believe it would benefit the farmer and
society in other perspective, as the knowledge level farmer
is indirectly improved.
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