The global agricultural sector confronts significant obstacles such as population growth, climate change, and natural disasters, which negatively impact food production and pose a threat to food security. In response to these challenges, the integration of IoT and AI technologies emerges as a promising solution, facilitating data-driven decision-making, optimizing resource allocation, and enhancing monitoring and control systems in agricultural operations to address these challenges and promote sustainable farming practices. This study examines the intersection of IoT and AI in precision agriculture (PA), aiming to provide a comprehensive understanding of their combined impact and mutually reinforcing relationship. Employing a systematic literature review following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines, we explore the synergies and transformative potential of integrating IoT and AI in agricultural systems. The review also aims to identify present trends, challenges, and opportunities in utilizing IoT and AI in agricultural systems. Diverse forms of agricultural practices are scrutinized to discern the applications of IoT and AI systems. Through a critical analysis of existing literature, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of how the integration of IoT and AI technologies can revolutionize PA, resulting in improved efficiency, sustainability, and productivity in the agricultural sector.

Hyperparameter optimization is a fundamental part of Auto Machine Learning (AutoML) and it has been widely researched in recent years; however, it still remains as one of the main challenges in this area. Motivated by the need of faster and more accurate hyperparameter optimization algorithms we developed HyperBRKGA, a new population-based approach for hyperparameter optimization. HyperBRKGA combines the Biased Random Key Genetic Algorithm with an Exploitation Method in order to search the hyperparameter space more efficiently than other commonly used hyperparameter optimization algorithms, such as Grid Search, Random Search, CMA-ES or Bayesian Optimization. We develop and test two different alternatives for this Exploitation Method: Random Walk and Bayesian Walk. We also discuss and implement other schemes, such as a Training Data Reduction Strategy and a Diversity Control strategy, in order to further improve the efficacy of our method. We performed several computational experiments on 8 different datasets to assess the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Results showed that HyperBRKGA could find hyperparameter configurations that outperformed in terms of predictive quality the baseline methods in 6 out of 8 datasets while showing a reasonable execution time. Lastly, we conducted an ablation study and showed that the addition of every component was relevant to achieving high quality results.

Machine learning has recently become a popular algorithm in building reliable intrusion detection systems (IDSs). However, most of the models are static and trained using datasets containing all targeted intrusions. If new intrusions emerge, these trained models must be retrained using old and new datasets to classify all intrusions accurately. In real-world situations, new threats continuously appear. Therefore, machine learning algorithms used for IDSs should have the ability to learn incrementally when these new intrusions emerge. To solve this issue, we propose T-DFNN. T-DFNN is an algorithm capable of learning new intrusions incrementally as they emerge. A T-DFNN model is composed of multiple deep feedforward neural network (DFNN) models connected in a tree-like structure. We examined our proposed algorithm using CICIDS2017, an open and widely used network intrusion dataset covering benign traffic and the most common network intrusions. The experimental results showed that the T-DFNN algorithm can incrementally learn new intrusions and reduce the catastrophic forgetting effect. The macro average of the F1-score of the T-DFNN model was over 0.85 for every retraining process. In addition, our proposed T-DFNN model has some advantages in several aspects compared to other models. Compared to the DFNN and Hoeffding tree models trained with a dataset containing only the latest targeted intrusions, our proposed T-DFNN model has higher F1-scores. Moreover, our proposed T-DFNN model has significantly shorter training times than a DFNN model trained using a dataset containing all targeted intrusions. Even though several factors can affect the duration of the training process, the T-DFNN algorithm shows promising results in solving the problem of ever-evolving network intrusion variants.

Data fusion is a prevalent technique for assembling imperfect raw data coming from multiple sources to capture reliable and accurate information. Dempster–Shafer evidence theory is one of useful methodologies in the fusion of uncertain multisource information. The existing literature lacks a thorough and comprehensive review of the recent advances of Dempster– Shafer evidence theory for data fusion. Therefore, the state of the art has to be surveyed to gain insight into how Dempster–Shafer evidence theory is beneficial for data fusion and how it evolved over time. In this paper, we first provide a comprehensive review of data fusion methods based on Dempster–Shafer evidence theory and its extensions, collectively referred to as classical evidence theory, from three aspects of uncertainty modeling, fusion, and decision making. Next, we study and explore complex evidence theory for data fusion in both closed world and open world contexts that benefits from the frame of complex plane modelling. We then present classical and complex evidence theory framework-based multisource data fusion algorithms, which are applied to pattern classification to compare and demonstrate their applicabilities. The research results indicate that the complex evidence theory framework can enhance the capabilities of uncertainty modeling and reasoning by generating constructive interference through the fusion of appropriate complex basic belief assignment functions modeled by complex numbers. Through analysis and comparison, we finally propose several challenges and identify open future research directions in evidence theorybased data fusion.

To mitigate the effects of the lack of IoT standardization, including scalability, reusability, and interoperability, we propose a domain-agnostic monitoring and control framework (MCF) for the design and implementation of Internet of Things (IoT) systems. We created building blocks for the layers of the five-layer IoT architecture and built the MCF’s subsystems (monitoring subsystem, control subsystem, and computing subsystem). We demonstrated the utilization of MCF in a real-world use-case in smart agriculture, using off-the-shelf sensors and actuators and an open-source code. As a user guide, we discuss the necessary considerations for each subsystem and evaluate our framework in terms of its scalability, reusability, and interoperability (issues that are often overlooked during development). Aside from the freedom to choose the hardware used to build complete open-source IoT solutions, the MCF use-case was less expensive, as revealed by a cost analysis that compared the cost of implementing the system using the MCF to obtain commercial solutions. Our MCF is shown to cost up to 20 times less than normal solutions, while serving its purpose. We believe that the MCF eliminated the domain restriction found in many IoT frameworks and serves as a first step toward IoT standardization. Our framework was shown to be stable in real-world applications, with the code not incurring a significant increase in power utilization, and could be operated using common rechargeable batteries and a solar panel. In fact, our code consumed so little power that the usual amount of energy was two times higher than what is necessary to keep the batteries full. We also show that the data provided by our framework are reliable through the use of multiple different sensors operating in parallel and sending similar data at a stable rate, without significant differences between the readings. Lastly, the elements of our framework can exchange data in a stable way with very few package losses, being able to read over 1.5 million data points in the course of three months.

Intelligent applications in several areas increasingly rely on big data solutions to improve their efficiency, but the processing and management of big data incur high costs. Although cloud-computing-based big data management and processing offer a promising solution to provide scalable and abundant resources, the current cloud-based big data management platforms do not properly address the high latency, privacy, and bandwidth consumption challenges that arise when sending large volumes of user data to the cloud. Computing in the edge and fog layers is quickly emerging as an extension of cloud computing used to reduce latency and bandwidth consumption, resulting in some of the processing tasks being performed in edge/fog-layer devices. Although these devices are resource-constrained, recent increases in resource capacity provide the potential for collaborative big data processing. We investigated the deployment of data processing platforms based on three different computing paradigms, namely batch processing, stream processing, and function processing, by aggregating the processing power from a diverse set of nodes in the local area. Herein, we demonstrate the efficacy and viability of edge-/fog-layer big data processing across a variety of real-world applications and in comparison to the cloud-native approach in terms of performance.