IoT-Equipped and AI-Enabled Next Generation Smart Agriculture: A Critical Review, Current Challenges and Future Trends

Smart agriculture techniques have recently seen widespread interest by farmers. This is driven by several factors, which include the widespread availability of economically-priced, low-powered Internet of Things (IoT) based wireless sensors to remotely monitor and report conditions of the field, climate, and crops. This enables efficient management of resources like minimizing water requirements for irrigation and minimizing the use of toxic pesticides. Furthermore, the recent boom in Artificial Intelligence can enable farmers to deploy autonomous farming machinery and make better predictions of the future based on present and past conditions to minimize crop diseases and pest infestation. Together these two enabling technologies have revolutionized conventional agriculture practices. This survey paper provides: (a) A detailed tutorial on the available advancements in the field of smart agriculture systems through IoT technologies and AI techniques; (b) A critical review of these two available technologies and challenges in their widespread deployment; and (c) An in-depth discussion about the future trends including both technological and social, when smart agriculture systems will be widely adopted by the farmers globally.