Designing a Message Queuing Telemetry Transport-Based Smart Livestock Communication Structure for High-Frequency Environmental Data Collection

Efficient, high-frequency collection of environmental data is crucial for real-time monitoring and automated management in smart livestock settings. However, existing RS485-based polling method has limitations. Therefore, in this study, a parallel Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT)-based communication structure was designed for multisensory structures. The proposed system enables the broker to send messages simultaneously from distributed sensor nodes and uses a topic-based hierarchical structure to ensure scalability and processing efficiency. The structure’s performance was experimentally tested using three scenarios: changing the node count, changing the transmission interval, and comparing communication methods. The proposed MQTT structure showed superior performance to RS485 in terms of the mean latency (98 ms vs 178 ms), message reception success rate (99.2% vs 94.5%), processing rate (1.33 msg/s vs 0.67 msg/s), and communication error frequency (1.3 errors/1000 trials vs 5.7 errors/1000 trials). In addition the topic-based message structure was shown to enable dynamic scalability with diverse environmental sensors. This study empirically demonstrated the utility and stability of an MQTT-based communication structure in a smart livestock setting that requires high-frequency data collection. These findings could be used as foundational technology for intelligent automated livestock implementations.