A review of wireless sensor technologies and applications in agriculture and food industry: State of the art and current trends

Abstract

The aim of the present paper is to review the technical and scientific state of the art of wireless sensor technologies and standards for wireless communications in the Agri- Food sector. These technologies are very promising in several fields such as environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, cold chain control or traceability. The paper focuses on WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks) and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), presenting the different systems available, recent developments and examples of applications, including ZigBee based WSN and passive, semi-passive and active RFID. Future trends of wireless communications in agriculture and food industry are also discussed. © 2009 by the authors; licensee Molecular Diversity Preservation International, Basel, Switzerland.