Saffron, one of the most expensive crops on earth, having a vast domain of applications, has the potential to boost the economy of India. The cultivation of saffron has been immensely affected in the past few years due to the changing climate. Despite the use of different artificial methods for cultivation, hydroponic approaches using the IoT prove to give the best results. The presented study consists of potential artificial approaches used for cultivation and the selection of hydroponics as the best approach out of these based on different parameters. This paper also provides a comparative analysis of six present hydroponic approaches. The research work on different factors of saffron, such as the parameters responsible for growth, reasons for the decline in growth, and different agronomical variables, has been shown graphically. A smart hydroponic system for saffron cultivation has been proposed using the NFT (nutrient film technique) and renewable sources of energy.

With new technologies coming to the market, the Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the technologies that has gained exponential rise by facilitating Machine to Machine (M2M) communication and bringing smart devices closer to end users. By 2025, it is expected that IoT will bring together 78.4 billion of devices, thus improving the quality of life beyond our imagination; however, there are multiple potential challenges, such as the exploitation of energy consumption and the huge data traffic being generated by smart devices causing congestion and utilizing more bandwidth. Various researchers have provided an alternative to this problem by performing offloading of data, the task and computational requirements of an application at edge and fog nodes of IoT, thus helping to overcome latency issues for critical applications. Despite the importance of an offloading approach in IoT, there is need for a systematic, symmetric, comprehensive, and detailed survey in this field. This paper provides a systematic literature review (SLR) on data offloading approaches in IoT network at edge and fog nodes in the form of a classical taxonomy in order to recognize the state-of-the art mechanism(s) associated with this important topic and provide open consideration of issues as well. All of the research on classified offloading approaches done by researchers is compared with each other according to important factors such as performance metrics, utilized techniques, and evaluation tools, and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Finally, an efficient smart architecture-based framework is proposed to handle the symmetric data offloading issues.

The world population is on the rise, which demands higher food production. The reduction in the amount of land under cultivation due to urbanization makes this more challenging. The solution to this problem lies in the artificial cultivation of crops. IoT and sensors play an important role in optimizing the artificial cultivation of crops. The selection of sensors is important in order to ensure a better quality and yield in an automated artificial environment. There are many challenges involved in selecting sensors due to the highly competitive market. This paper provides a novel approach to sensor selection for saffron cultivation in an IoT-based environment. The crop used in this study is saffron due to the reason that much less research has been conducted on its hydroponic cultivation using sensors and its huge economic impact. A detailed hardware-based framework, the growth cycle of the crop, along with all the sensors, and the block layout used for saffron cultivation in a hydroponic medium are provided. The important parameters for a hydroponic medium, such as the concentration of nutrients and flow rate required, are discussed in detail. This paper is the first of its kind to explain the sensor configurations, performance metrics, and sensor-based saffron cultivation model. The paper discusses different metrics related to the selection, use and role of sensors in different IoT-based saffron cultivation practices. A smart hydroponic setup for saffron cultivation is proposed. The results of the model are evaluated using the AquaCrop simulator. The simulator is used to evaluate the value of performance metrics such as the yield, harvest index, water productivity, and biomass. The values obtained provide better results as compared to natural cultivation.

The present technological era significantly makes use of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices for offering and implementing healthcare services. Post COVID-19, the future of the healthcare system is highly reliant upon the inculcation of Artificial-Intelligence (AI) mechanisms in its day-to-day procedures, and this is realized in its implementation using sensor-enabled smart and intelligent IoT devices for providing extensive care to patients relative to the symmetric concept. The offerings of such AI-enabled services include handling the huge amount of data processed and sensed by smart medical sensors without compromising the performance parameters, such as the response time, latency, availability, cost and processing time. This has resulted in a need to balance the load of the smart operational devices to avoid any failure of responsiveness. Thus, in this paper, a fog-based framework is proposed that can balance the load among fog nodes for handling the challenging communication and processing requirements of intelligent real-time applications.

Saffron, also known as “the golden spice”, is one of the most expensive crops in the world. The expensiveness of saffron comes from its rarity, the tedious harvesting process, and its nutritional and medicinal value. Different countries of the world are making great economic growth due to saffron export. In India, it is cultivated mostly in regions of Kashmir owing to its climate and soil composition. The economic value generated by saffron export can be increased manyfold by studying the agronomical factors of saffron and developing a model for artificial cultivation of saffron in any season and anywhere by monitoring and controlling the conditions of its growth. This paper presents a detailed study of all the agronomical variables of saffron that have a direct or indirect impact on its growth. It was found that, out of all the agronomical variables, the important ones having an impact on growth include corm size, temperature, water availability, and minerals. It was also observed that the use of IoT for the sustainable cultivation of saffron in smart cities has been discussed only by very few research papers. An IoT-based framework has also been proposed, which can be used for controlling and monitoring all the important growth parameters of saffron for its cultivation.

Internet of Things (IoT) has made its imprint on every part of the globe today. Offices, households, factories, industries, agriculture, and day cares, among other places, have all upgraded to their innovative version. It has propounded great potential in various real-world applications. The topical trends in the adoption of IoT have also highlighted the challenges associated with the performance of IoT devices. IoT devices require continuous monitoring for any performance degradation. A bibliometric analysis of 587 papers is undertaken on the Scopus database to spot the increasing interest of researchers in fault detection in IoT. A smart system’s or an IoT-based space’s usability, efficiency, and performance are all built on a fault-tolerant approach and interruption-free smooth operations. The investigation was carried out based on the literature to determine the need for a pro-fault detection system in an IoT-enabled day care. Kids’ security and safety are highly dependent on the hassle-free working of smart devices. It’s overhead to carry out device tracking manually along with demanding kids. This issue needs to be addressed to uphold the smart day care’s trustworthiness. A pro-fault detection approach can be applied to resolve the aforementioned issue to enhance the smart day care’s performance and efficiency. This paper proposes SWOT, a novel hybrid hardware-based approach in an IoT-based day care to safeguard the proper working of all IoT devices deployed. It screens every single appliance associated with a smart day care to detect the faulty appliance beforehand. The solution will assist the day care staff in providing the best care and security to their kids without any overhead. SWOT evaluation proved that it is an economical and efficient approach in detecting faults, accurately, swiftly, and with a low false alarm ratio.