A Secure IoT-Based Irrigation System for Precision Agriculture Using the Expeditious Cipher

Abstract

Due to the recent advances in the domain of smart agriculture as a result of integrating traditional agriculture and the latest information technologies including the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI), there is an urgent need to address the information security-related issues and challenges in this field. In this article, we propose the integration of lightweight cryptography techniques into the IoT ecosystem for smart agriculture to meet the requirements of resource-constrained IoT devices. Moreover, we investigate the adoption of a lightweight encryption protocol, namely, the Expeditious Cipher (X-cipher), to create a secure channel between the sensing layer and the broker in the Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol as well as a secure channel between the broker and its subscribers. Our case study focuses on smart irrigation systems, and the MQTT protocol is deployed as the application messaging protocol in these systems. Smart irrigation strives to decrease the misuse of natural resources by enhancing the efficiency of agricultural irrigation. This secure channel is utilized to eliminate the main security threat in precision agriculture by protecting sensors’ published data from eavesdropping and theft, as well as from unauthorized changes to sensitive data that can negatively impact crops’ development. In addition, the secure channel protects the irrigation decisions made by the data analytics (DA) entity regarding the irrigation time and the quantity of water that is returned to actuators from any alteration. Performance evaluation of our chosen lightweight encryption protocol revealed an improvement in terms of power consumption, execution time, and required memory usage when compared with the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Moreover, the selected lightweight encryption protocol outperforms the PRESENT lightweight encryption protocol in terms of throughput and memory usage.

Determination of Crop Soil Quality for Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni Morita II Using a Fuzzy Logic Model and a Wireless Sensor Network

“…The hardware includes the master node, sensor node, and sensors, which are responsible for collecting data from the environment. Data transmission is facilitated through technologies like LoRa and IEEE 802.11 protocols [14,15,24], enabling effective communication between nodes and the web platform. Additionally, the implementation aspect of a WSN involves the position where the components, such as sensor nodes and repeaters, are physically deployed.…”

“…Monitoring systems, often referred to as internet of things (IoT) or precision agriculture systems, have emerged as a common solution for collecting data on various variables of interest. These systems enable the gathering of environmental variables [13][14][15][16][17], soil parameters [18][19][20][21][22], and water parameters [23]. Typically, such systems comprise electronic sensors designed to measure specific variables, along with microcontrollers or interconnected microcontrollers that interpret the sensor data and transmit it wirelessly as a wireless sensor network (WSN).…”

“…Typically, such systems comprise electronic sensors designed to measure specific variables, along with microcontrollers or interconnected microcontrollers that interpret the sensor data and transmit it wirelessly as a wireless sensor network (WSN). In the case of a networked system, a dedicated device receives the transmitted data and stores them in a database, such as structured query language (SQL), either by sending requests to a cloud server or utilizing IoT services like ThingSpeak [15,18]. To facilitate data analysis, these monitoring systems often include a graphical interface that allows users to access and visualize the collected data.…”

“…These microcontrollers are often integrated into embedded development boards such as node microcontroller units (NodeMCUs) and TTGO boards made by LILYGO. Their popularity stems from their user-friendly nature and support for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 protocol, also known as WIFI, enabling wireless communication and internet access when connected to compatible networks [14,15,17,18,22].…”

“…Data collected from monitoring systems can be stored in various ways. One common option is to send measurements over the internet to an IoT platform, such as ThingSpeak, Adafruit input-output (IO), clouds, or the IBM Watson IoT Platform [15,17,18]. These platforms provide convenient and scalable solutions for storing and managing sensor data.…”