A Comprehensive Review of Using WSNs and Drones for Improving Crop Production in Precision Agriculture

Abstract

Precision agriculture (PA) plays an essential role in resource use and crop yields while minimising environmental impact through data-driven farming techniques. The combination of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the Internet of Things (IoT) and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has significantly transformed the current state of farming, enabling decisions based on data, predicting outcomes and precise control. This review presents the current developments, challenges and complementary advantages of these technologies to improve agricultural efficiency and sustainability in a comprehensive manner. The search timeframe of this search is 2019–2025. The analysis of the WSN-based systems begins with the analysis of sensing technologies, communication protocols (LoRa, Sigfox, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, NB-IoT and RFID), sensor architecture, energy consumption and path-loss models, which affect the data transmission in an agricultural setting. It highlights the weaknesses of WSN deployment, such as power consumption and coverage. Second, the use of UAVs in crop monitoring, irrigation, pest detection and resource optimisation is reviewed with references to the incorporation of sensing and data analytics algorithms and the challenges associated with UAV use, such as the short flight duration and energy consumption. Third, IoT-based frameworks are researched in the context of their roles in the PA of real-time monitoring, automated controls and smart decision-making. The findings suggest that a network of WSNs, UAVs and the IoT can be used to enhance monitoring quality, data quality and resource utilisation by multiple orders of magnitude. However, such barriers as energy consumption, connectivity differences, complexity of data and costs will be topical. Overall, the WSN-UAV-IoT combo is a potentially fruitful direction that could assist PA to take a step forward in terms of productivity, sustainability and environmental friendliness.