Applications of IoT and Blockchain in Smart Agriculture: Architectures and Challenges

Internet of Things (IoT) technologies have created a big revolution in the ICT industries. It’s has penetrated in almost all sectors including healthcare, manufacturing, education, agriculture, etc. However, there are many challenges facing the IoT implementations due to its centralized server/client model. Many of the technologies in IoT is based on centralized model which introduce a new set of technical limitations to manage them. These includes traffic congestion when the server couldn’t support the large number of request from clients and when the server is down, client request cannot be met. Shifting IoT systems into the decentralized systems is one of the potential solution and Blockchain is the best option for decentralization. Blockchain technology decentralizes computation and management processes and can solve many IoT issues including security. A generalized IoT-based Blockchain architecture for Smart Agriculture application is proposed. Furthermore, the opportunities and challenges based on this architecture is discussed in detail.