# Precision Agriculture: A Remote Sensing Monitoring System Architecture +
## 2 The Architecture of a Smart Farming Monitoring System  
A precision agriculture monitoring system consists mainly of the sensing agricultural parameters, the identification of sensing location and data gathering, the routing of data from crop field to control station for decision making, the actuation and control decision based on sensed data and the visualization of results to the grower through an application. The architectural design of our model follows the ISO/IEC 7498-1 standard or else known as the OSI Model [12], proposing a communication system into seven abstraction layers. However, due the employment of IoT technologies and artificial intelligence capabilities the basic agricultural layers are defined as presented in Figure 1:  
* The Sensor Layer, referring to the Physical Layer of the OSI Model, includes all kinds of crops sensors and smart objects for data collection and monitoring. Sensors can be placed under ground(in the soil), on the crops or on UAVs [6]. Underground sensors are especially manufactured to be water resistant and usually refer to measurements of moisture, pH and soil chemical properties such as sulfur. UAV sensors measure environmental parameters such as humidity, temperature, wind speed, luminosity or solar radiation. However, the most popular kind of sensors to be placed on UAVs are thermal cameras. Thermal drones which use vision  
Figure 1: Remote Sensing System Architecture. imaging cameras have so many positive uses by detecting heat coming from almost all objects and materials turning them into images and video. * The Link Layer, referring to the Data Link Layer of the OSI Model, constitutes of all available networking and routing technologies between sensors for information exchange. To deploy efficient crop and field management the IoT platform uses Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). The use of WSN in smart farming systems provides immediate monitoring and optimization of crop quality, while offering a potential for large area surveillance with high sampling densities. The constant monitoring of a great number of environmental parameters by distributed sensor nodes along the field help the grower supervise and maintain optimal conditions to achieve maximum productivity with remarkable energy savings. * The Encapsulation Layer, referring to the Network Layer of the OSI Model, focuses on the establishment of smart sensor connection to the IPv6-based internet. This layer consists of IoT networking encapsulation techniques and routing protocols to transform the regular WSN network traffic into smart information. In other words, the technologies of this layer enable the cultivated field sensory data to be encapsulated in IPv6 routing packets and be forwarded to the according network server. * The Middleware Layer, referring to the Transport Layer of the OSI Model, uses different application level transport protocols in order to forward the data generated from IoT sensor devices based on different paradigms. It also provides interfaces that enable device communication for management or actuation purposes. This layer facilitates the desired interoperability due to the existence of diverse standards, which are endorsed by different entities. * The Configuration Layer, referring to the Session and Presentation Layers of the OSI Model, is situated between the Middleware Layer and the Management Layer. This layer is responsible for gathering the raw data coming from the devices or other external services, curate, harmonize and possibly aggregate them, so that they can be published as context information, or supplied to upstream data processing algorithms or analytics. In addition, this layer is also capable of sending actuation commands to the Middleware Layer. Finally, the Configuration Layer may also be capable of gathering data from other data sources, such as agricultural machinery or public geo-services. * The Management Layer involves the processing and analysis of the collected data.