Data communication mechanism for greenhouse environment monitoring and control: An agent-based IoT system

Internet of things (IoT) technology has been constantly applied in greenhouse environmental monitoring and control in recent years. The acquisition and control parameters, network protocols are different for the various purposes of the greenhouse. These factors are the keys to the abilities to effectively communicate and transfer meaningful data in IoT infrastructures. To achieve the adaptive matching of data communication between the gateway and server in a greenhouse IoT system, a data encapsulation method based on XML was designed to enable data interoperability in a distributed greenhouse IoT system. Furthermore, the behaviour of the Multi-Agent System (MAS) was used to merge the heterogeneous information and the responses for data synchronization in the greenhouse IoT system. The data communication mechanism for real-time and cumulative data synchronization between the gateway and server based on JADE was tested in a specific greenhouse. The results showed that the data loss rate between the data acquisition unit and the gateway was 1.52%, and the data loss rate was 0.4% between the gateway and the server; therefore, the mechanism could be feasibly applied to the data communication for a greenhouse IoT system.