Available at www.sciencedirect.

com

INFORMATION PROCESSING IN AGRICULTURE xxx (xxxx) xxx

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/inpa

Data communication mechanism for greenhouse

environment monitoring and control:
An agent-based IoT system

Jizhang Wang a,*, Meizheng Chen a, Jinsheng Zhou a, Pingping Li a,b

a
Key Laboratory of Modern Agricultural Equipment and Technology, Ministry of Education and Jiangsu Province, School of Agricultural
Equipment Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China
b
College of Biology and the Environment, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Article history: Internet of things (IoT) technology has been constantly applied in greenhouse environmen-
Received 28 August 2018 tal monitoring and control in recent years. The acquisition and control parameters, net-
Received in revised form work protocols are different for the various purposes of the greenhouse. These factors
16 September 2019 are the keys to the abilities to effectively communicate and transfer meaningful data in
Accepted 22 November 2019 IoT infrastructures. To achieve the adaptive matching of data communication between
Available online xxxx the gateway and server in a greenhouse IoT system, a data encapsulation method based
on XML was designed to enable data interoperability in a distributed greenhouse IoT sys-
Keywords: tem. Furthermore, the behaviour of the Multi-Agent System (MAS) was used to merge
Greenhouse the heterogeneous information and the responses for data synchronization in the green-
Data communication house IoT system. The data communication mechanism for real-time and cumulative data
XML synchronization between the gateway and server based on JADE was tested in a specific
Internet of Things (IoT) greenhouse. The results showed that the data loss rate between the data acquisition unit
Agent and the gateway was 1.52%, and the data loss rate was 0.4% between the gateway and
the server; therefore, the mechanism could be feasibly applied to the data communication
for a greenhouse IoT system.
Ó 2019 China Agricultural University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of
KeAi. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction the application layer [11]. In the network layer, the gateway
is developed as a middleware to communicate with the per-
Internet of Things technology has been widely applied in ception and application layers. In the application layer, the
greenhouse environmental monitoring and control in the remote server is used as a channel for sensor data, which
past decade [1–10]. The structure of the IoT is based on three are usually forwarded to a remote infrastructure for storage,
layers, namely, the perception layer, the network layer, and analysis, processing, and decision support [12,13].
To improve the interoperability of the IoT system,
machine-to-machine (M2M) communication must provide a
* Corresponding author at: 301, Xuefu Road, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu seamless intersystem for the exchange of information. To
212013, China. exchange information in the systems, the XML (Extensible
E-mail address: whxh@ujs.edu.cn (J. Wang).
Markup Language) can be used as a markup language that
Peer review under responsibility of China Agricultural University.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inpa.2019.11.002
2214-3173 Ó 2019 China Agricultural University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Please cite this article as: J. Wang, M. Chen, J. Zhou et al., Data communication mechanism for greenhouse environment monitoring and control:
An agent-based IoT system, Information Processing in Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inpa.2019.11.002
2 Information Processing in Agriculture
is readable by both humans and machines, and it has been
used as the M2M communication method in an agricultural
IoT system. Wu et al proposed the agricultural information
4-tuple data model (MCOD) that uses XML data files to maxi-
mize the synchronization efficiency of high-capacity agricul-
tural spatial data. In the network layer, which is highly
suitable for transferring data between servers and mobile cli-
ents [14]. Wang et al developed an integrated network platform
based on XML to parse and store data from different monitor-
ing terminals according to the standard format of a communi-
cation protocol for heterogeneous agricultural information
remote monitoring systems [15]. To exchange data between
different systems, Murakami et al developed the Precision
Agriculture Markup Language (PAML) as a message-oriented
middleware for connecting web services based on XML [16].
Wolfert et al produced a standardized XML-based method for
exchanging data between a farm management system and
other systems [17]. Schuster et al designed an Internet-based
architecture for M2M communications and computations by
using XML to enable data interoperability in a synthetic com-
puting environment and to establish connections between
data and mathematical models [18]. Dai et al designed a set
of agricultural production management data structure stan-
dards based on XML and AgroXML to realize unified data
understandings in different systems [19]. Xiong et al designed
the web data asynchronous interaction framework based on
asynchronous JavaScript and XML technology to achieve the
real-time synchronization of action states in a greenhouse
control system [20]. Therefore, as a data structure standard,
XML can be used as a language for information exchange to
improve the interoperability in IoT systems.
To achieve the remote management of agricultural infor-
mation, Web services have been used for data exchange from
different data sources. Nguyen and Kowalczyk developed an
integration framework of Web services and an agent platform
that is compliant with the Foundation for Intelligent Physical
Agents (FIPA) called Jade WS2JADE, and a special agent was
designed to communicate between Web services and agents
[21]. Nikkila et al designed a service infrastructure that trans-
fers the production standards in a computer-encoded and
machine-interpretable format between the stakeholders of
modern agricultural production. These encoded production
standards provided an immediate benefit for farmers and
providers of farm management information systems by ulti-
mately enabling automated compliance control using existing
farm data [22]. Chen et al designed a sharing platform for the
distributed multi-source IoT sensor data from agriculture and
forestry. The platform used a non-blocking Socket interface
and a data acquisition interface based on HTTP and Web Ser-
vice protocol to receive data from different data sources [23].
To ascertain the optimal approach for integrating web
service-enabled agricultural information systems and mobile
devices, Arroqui et al analysed the outcomes of employing
either the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) or Re-
presentational State Transfer (REST) approaches in a web
service-enabled whole-farm simulator that can accessed
from Android-powered smart phones [24]. Additionally, Web
Please cite this article as: J. Wang, M. Chen, J. Zhou et al., Data communication mechanism for greenhouse environment monitoring and control:
An agent-based IoT system, Information Processing in Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inpa.2019.11.002
xxx (xxxx) xxx
Service and SOAP can be used as the data exchange protocol
for different data sources and platforms, but in the IoT sys-
tem for a greenhouse, the system needs to adaptively match
the requirements of distributing the information communica-
tions related to the greenhouse environmental monitoring
and control. Multi-Agent System (MAS) technology, as a dis-
tributed decision support system that can optimize logistical
processes in agricultural production [25,26], has been applied
in the agricultural context for greenhouse environmental
monitoring and control [27–29]. Therefore, the MAS can be
used to devise an autonomous and proactive solution for inte-
grating various agricultural information and communication
protocol that can achieve distributed information communi-
cation [30].
In various greenhouses, the variability of sensing and con-
trol parameters, network protocols lead to heterogeneous
information communication between the three IoT layers.
This heterogeneity influences the interoperability of the sys-
tem [9]. To achieve the adaptive matching of the data commu-
nication between the gateway and server for a greenhouse IoT
system, the purposes of this study are the following: (1) to
design a data encapsulation method for communicating data
based on XML to enable data interoperability in a distributed
acquisition and control environment, (2) to develop the data
communication mechanism based on the MAS to integrate
various greenhouse information and communication protocol
to achieve the one-way synchronization of the real-time
acquisition data and to control information synchronization
and two-way synchronization of the environmental acquisi-
tion and control unit configuration information, (3) to use
the behaviour of the MAS to merge the heterogeneous infor-
mation from the greenhouse IoT system and to enable data
synchronization between the systems, and (4) to use the Java
Agent Development (JADE) framework to test the data com-
munication mechanism for the real-time and cumulative
data synchronization between the gateway and server.
2. Background and related concepts
2.1. IoT system for greenhouse environment monitoring
and control
To achieve high-efficiency monitoring of environmental infor-
mation, we developed an IoT monitoring management sys-
tem for a greenhouse [31]. Fig. 1 shows the structure of the
IoT system for greenhouse environmental monitoring and
control. The system mainly consists of an intelligent gateway
based on an Android system and a remote web server. The
gateway collects the greenhouse environmental data by using
a data acquisition unit and stores them in the SQLite data-
base. Meanwhile, the greenhouse environmental data are
transported to the server via the gateway. The gateway
receives the control data stream from the server, and then
parses and sends the data stream to the control unit. The con-
trol node controls the greenhouse equipment, such as the
windows, fans and heating equipment. The server system
receives and manages the data from the gateway.
 Information Processing in Agriculture xxx (xxxx) xxx 3

Fig. 1 – Structure of IoT system for greenhouse environment monitoring and control.

2.2. Data encapsulation and communication based on such as a simple yet powerful task execution and composition
XML model, peer-to-peer agent communication based on the asyn-
chronous message passing paradigm, and a yellow pages ser-
The data from the greenhouse environment acquisition unit vice supporting a publish-subscribe discovery mechanism.
and control unit, such as the configuration parameter infor- Furthermore, suitable configurations can be specified to run
mation, real-time data, and communication status, are com- JADE agents in networks that are characterized by partial con-
municated between the intelligent gateway and the server. nectivity, including network address translations, firewalls,
To adapt to the heterogeneous data structures of different intermittent coverage and IP address changes [34].
acquisition and control units, the XML tree structures are
adopted to achieve information encapsulation [32]. Moreover,
JADE provides considerable support for automatically con-
verting information back and forth between string formats
including XML and RDF to more conveniently and quickly cre-
ate and manage message contents. Therefore, all the infor-
mation encapsulation and communication are conducted
using XML in this system. The data model of the greenhouse
acquisition and control units is shown in Fig. 2.

2.3. JADE framework

The JADE framework is a software scheme that is designed to

simplify the development of multi-agent applications. The
JADE framework simplifies the implementation of multi-
agent systems through middleware that complies with the
FIPA specifications and through a set of graphical tools that
support the debugging and deployment phases [33]. A JADE-
based system can be distributed across machines, and its
configuration can be controlled with a remote graphical user
interface (GUI). If it should be required, this configuration
could even be changed at runtime by transferring agents from
one machine to another. JADE provides many advanced fea-
tures to facilitate the development of a distributed system, Fig. 2 – Data model of acquisition unit and control unit.

Please cite this article as: J. Wang, M. Chen, J. Zhou et al., Data communication mechanism for greenhouse environment monitoring and control:
An agent-based IoT system, Information Processing in Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inpa.2019.11.002
4 Information Processing in Agriculture
2.4. JADE for android
With the development of mobile devices, operating systems
must support the development of third-party applications
with open system APIs. In addition to an open API, the
Android operating system provides a rich inter-application
message transferring system. Because of the progressive inte-
gration between the wireless and wired environments, the
deployment of distributed applications is becoming increas-
ingly imperative. Moreover, with the contribution of the LEAP
project, versions of JADE exist that are designed to transpar-
ently deploy JADE agents in different Java-oriented environ-
ments, such as on Android devices and J2ME-CLDC MIDP 1.0
devices. Therefore, Ughetti et al. [34] and Bergenti et al. [35]
have used the JADE-LEAP add-on to integrate the JADE and
Android platforms. This add-on addressed the communica-
tion among JADE agents, among Android activities, and
between JADE agents and Android activities.
3. System development
3.1. Data communication system based on the agent
The structure of the data communication system based on
the Agent IoT system for greenhouse monitoring and control
is shown in Fig. 3. The system consists of a GatewayAgent, a
ServerAgent and the communication between them. The
communication is based on the Agent Communication Lan-
guage (ACL). According to the FIPA specifications of the agent
system, the server is constituted by an Agent Management
System, a Directory Facilitator Agent, a Remote Management
Agent and a Sniffer Agent. The Sniffer Agent is used to test
the functioning of the system. All the functions of those
Agents are defined by the JADE system [33].
3.2. GatewayAgent
The GatewayAgent, which runs at the intelligent gateway,
uses JADE for Android. The function of the GatewayAgent is
to implement environmental acquisition node management,
Fig. 3 – System structure.
Please cite this article as: J. Wang, M. Chen, J. Zhou et al., Data communication mechanism for greenhouse environment monitoring and control:
An agent-based IoT system, Information Processing in Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inpa.2019.11.002
xxx (xxxx) xxx
communicate data to the server, and receive the message
from the server. The system functions are as follows.
(1) According to the server IP address and JADE port num-
ber, the GatewayAgent is registered in the JADE plat-
form of the server. The GatewayAgent enters the
initial state of the agent life cycle, activates the agent
state by using the setup() method, and registers with
the Directory Facilitator Agent.
(2) The GatewayAgent adds the execution cycle class
CyclicBehaviour() to achieve the information synchro-
nization connection. CyclicBehaviour() also sends the
real-time acquisition data and state of the data acquisi-
tion unit to the server.
(3) The GatewayAgent adds the execution cycle class Tick-
etBehaviour() to enable the intelligent gateway to
receive data from the server. TicketBehaviour() imple-
ments the data analysis and function processes accord-
ing to the message protocol and monitors the
communication command flag. When the flag is acti-
vated, measurement and control parameter informa-
tion is sent to the server.
3.3. ServerAgent
The ServerAgent is mainly used to manage the GatewayAgent
and transmit the measurement and control information. The
functions of the ServerAgent are shown as follows.
(1) The ServerAgent is registered in the JADE platform of
the server, and then it enters the initial state of the
agent life cycle. The agent state is activated using the
setup() method and registered with the Directory Facil-
itator Agent.
(2) The ServerAgent adds the execution cycle class Cyclic-
Behaviour() to receive the ACL information that is sent
from the GatewayAgent to the ServerAgent, and it
achieves the data analysis and function processes on
the basis of the message protocol.
 Information Processing in Agriculture xxx (xxxx) xxx 5

Fig. 4 – Data communication workflow. (a) One-way synchronization for the real-time information of the acquisition and
control units, (b) two-way synchronization for the configuration information of the acquisition and control units.

Please cite this article as: J. Wang, M. Chen, J. Zhou et al., Data communication mechanism for greenhouse environment monitoring and control:
An agent-based IoT system, Information Processing in Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inpa.2019.11.002
6 Information Processing in Agriculture xxx (xxxx) xxx

(3) The ServerAgent monitors the information that is
related to the measurement and control parameters,
including the control parameters’ values and the com-
munication commands. The ServerAgent sends the
communication command flag to the intelligent gate-
way when the flag is activated.
4. Data communication mechanism between
the gateway and the server
The data communication mechanism permits data synchro-
nization between the gateway and server. The data synchro-
nization includes one-way synchronization for the real-time
information of the acquisition and control units and two-
way synchronization for the configuration information of
the acquisition and control units [32]. The data communica-
tion procedure is shown in Fig. 4.
is working properly. Otherwise, the file ‘‘sensorvalue.
xml” is stored in the next data synchronization
cycle, and the data synchronization cycle is
ended.
(3) The ServerAgent receives the synchronization message
protocol ‘‘SensorData_Update”, and the
‘‘TicketBehaviour()” analyses the message and inserts
the data into the database according to the package
rules. Subsequently, the receiver sets the message pro-
tocol to ‘‘SensorData_Confirm” and replies to the syn-
chronization initiator.
(4) The GatewayAgent receives the message protocol
‘‘SensorData_Confirm” to end the synchronization.
Alternately, the synchronization ends when the node
of the file ‘‘sensorvalue.xml” is deleted.
(5) If the initiator cannot obtain the message protocol
‘‘SensorData_Confirm”, the ‘‘sensorvalue.xml” file is
stored until the next synchronization cycle.

4.1. Real-time acquisition information synchronization

The acquisition unit periodically collects the greenhouse
environmental information. Therefore, the gateway must
periodically synchronize the real-time acquisition informa-
tion with the server (Fig. 4(a)). The steps of the synchroniza-
tion are as follows.
(1) When the data synchronization cycle is started, the
GatewayAgent behaviour ‘‘CyclicBehaviour()” is acti-
vated to serve as a synchronization initiator
(2) The ServerAgent behaviour ‘‘CyclicBehaviour()” is
activated to judge whether the heartbeat connection
4.2. Real-time control information synchronization
If the greenhouse environment is not suitable for plant
growth, the server must send the control information to the
control unit via the gateway to adjust the greenhouse equip-
ment. Therefore, the real-time control information synchro-
nization represents the last control information. The
synchronization is similar to real-time acquisition data syn-
chronization. The ServerAgent is the initiator agent, and the
GatewayAgent is the receiver agent. The transport and reply
protocols are ‘‘CtlData_Update” and ‘‘CtlData_confirm”,
respectively.

Fig. 5 – JADE remote agent management GUI.

Please cite this article as: J. Wang, M. Chen, J. Zhou et al., Data communication mechanism for greenhouse environment monitoring and control:
An agent-based IoT system, Information Processing in Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inpa.2019.11.002
 Information Processing in Agriculture xxx (xxxx) xxx 7

Fig. 6 – Communication process of real-time data synchronization for acquisition unit.

Please cite this article as: J. Wang, M. Chen, J. Zhou et al., Data communication mechanism for greenhouse environment monitoring and control:
An agent-based IoT system, Information Processing in Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inpa.2019.11.002
8 Information Processing in Agriculture xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig. 7 – Data synchronization result between gateway and server.

4.3. Two-way synchronization of configuration
information
To achieve the two-way synchronization between the gate-
way and server, the synchronization message domain should
possess the message content and its protocol (Fig. 4(b)). The
steps of the synchronization are as follows.
(1) The synchronization initiator Agent actives the beha-
viour ‘‘CyclicBehaviour()” to determine whether the
heartbeat connection is working appropriately.
(2) Once the connection is established, the initiator starts
the behaviour ‘‘OneShotBehaviour()” to package the
configuration information as a message, sets the mes-
sage protocol as ‘‘DRUConfig_Update” (acquisition unit)
or ‘‘CUConfig_Update” (control unit), and then trans-
ports the message to the receiver.
(3) When the receiver gets the synchronization message
protocol ‘‘DRUConfig_Update‘‘ or ‘‘CUConfig_Update”,
the Agent’s behaviour ‘‘TicketBehaviour()” is activated
and used to determine whether the table exists in the
acquisition node configuration or control configuration
information database. If the table does not exist, a new
table will be created.
(4) According to the rules of the configuration information
package, the message is analysed as the table row
through the message protocol. The receiver subse-
quently sets the message protocol as ‘‘DRUConfig_Con
firm” (acquisition node) or ‘‘CUConfig_Confirm” (con-
trol node), and then sends the message to the synchro-
nization initiator.
(5) If the initiator receives the message protocol
‘‘DRUConfig_Confirm” or ‘‘CUConfig_Confirm”, the syn-
chronization will end. If the initiator does not receive

Please cite this article as: J. Wang, M. Chen, J. Zhou et al., Data communication mechanism for greenhouse environment monitoring and control:
An agent-based IoT system, Information Processing in Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inpa.2019.11.002
 Information Processing in Agriculture xxx (xxxx) xxx 9

the message protocol ‘‘DRUConfig_Confirm” or GatewayAgent and ServerAgent. The behaviour between the
‘‘CUConfig_Confirm”, the synchronization will fail, GatewayAgent and ServerAgent for real-time data synchro-
and the process will be repeated from step 1. nization is shown in Fig. 6(a). The content is the data stream
of the acquisition unit’s real-time information that is in XML
(Fig. 6(b)), and the protocol is the ‘‘SensorData_Update” (Fig. 6
5. Case study (c)). Therefore, the system has the ability to merge heteroge-
neous information from a greenhouse IoT system and to con-
5.1. GatewayAgent register duct data synchronization for the system.

As shown in Fig. 5, the JADE remote agent management GUI is
used to test the data communication between the gateway
and server. The gateway configures the server IP address
and the port, and then it stores the configuration information
as an XML file in the gateway. When the GatewayAgent is acti-
vated, the agent container reads the configuration informa-
tion from the file. According to the server IP address and the
port, the GatewayAgent is registered in the JADE platform of
the server through the Internet, and it is automatically
embedded in the agent container of the server’s JADE plat-
form. The ServerAgent is registered in the main container.
5.2. Data synchronization
5.2.1. Real-time data synchronization
Fig. 6 shows how the acquisition unit’s real-time information
is synchronized between the ServerAgent and GatewayAgent.
The Sniffer is integrated in the JADE environment and is par-
ticularly useful when debugging agents’ behaviours. There-
fore, we use the sniffer to track the message record of the
5.2.2. Cumulative data synchronization
The data synchronization communication between the gate-
way and server was tested via suspending communication
when the gateway and server were running. The gateway net-
work was disconnected for 30.0 mins and then the network
was reconnected. During the disconnection, the gateway
stored the cumulative data in the local file sensorvalue.xml
(Fig. 7(a)). When the network was recovered, the GatewayA-
gent transported the data to the ServerAgent. The ServerA-
gent phased the data according to the protocol, and it
stored the data in the MySQL database (Fig. 7(b)). The results
show that the system can effectively communicate and trans-
fer meaningful data, and the behaviours of the GatewayAgent
and ServerAgent determined the quality of the distributed IoT
infrastructures in highly varying systems.
5.3. Long-term running for data communication
To test the data communication mechanism for long-term
running, field tests were conducted in a strawberry green-

Fig. 8 – The greenhouse IoT system for Long-term data communication testing with 3 zigbee nodes for greenhouse
environment acquisition and 1 rs-485 node for outside weather acquisition.

Please cite this article as: J. Wang, M. Chen, J. Zhou et al., Data communication mechanism for greenhouse environment monitoring and control:
An agent-based IoT system, Information Processing in Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inpa.2019.11.002
10 Information Processing in Agriculture xxx (xxxx) xxx

Table 1 – Configurations of the greenhouse environment acquisition system.

Node Data acquisition Unit ID Sensor ID Sensor Protocol Signal type

Node1 f1 f11 Air temperature °C Zigbee Digital

f12 Air humidity %
BC000000 f41 Air temperature °C Zigbee Analog
f42 Air humidity %
b1 Soil temperature °C
BC000001 f51 Air temperature °C Zigbee Analog
f52 Air humidity %
b2 Soil temperature °C
Node 2 f2 f21 Air temperature °C Zigbee Digital
f22 Air humidity %
c1 c1 Carbon dioxide ppm Zigbee Digital
e1 e1 Light intensity lx Zigbee Digital
BC000004 f61 Air temperature °C Zigbee Analogl
f62 Air humidity %
b5 Soil temperature °C
BC000005 f71 Air temperature °C Zigbee Analog
f72 Air humidity %
b6 Soil temperature °C
Node 3 f3 f31 Air temperature °C Zigbee Digital
f32 Air humidity %
BC000002 f81 Air temperature °C Zigbee Analog
f82 Air humidity %
b3 Soil temperature °C
BC000003 f91 Air temperature °C Zigbee Analog
f92 Air humidity %
b4 Soil temperature °C
Node 4 a1 a11 Wind direction ° RS 485 Digital
a12 Air temperature °C
a13 Air humidity %
a14 Wind velocity m/s
a15 Rainfall mm
a16 UVI –
a17 Light intensity lx

house that was located at the Lishui planting base of the
Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences. A greenhouse envi-
ronmental acquisition system was set up with four gateway
nodes. The system structure is shown in Fig. 8, and the con-
figurations of each unit are shown in Table 1.
Table 2 is the results of the data transmission between the
data acquisition unit and the gateway. The data transmission
interval was set to 1.0 min, and the data acquisition unit ran
for 24 h. The results revealed that the average data loss rate
was 1.5%, and the maximum packet loss rate was 2.1%. Table 3
is the results of the data transmission between the gateway
and server. The testing was conducted from March 20, 2015,
to March 26, 2015. The data transmission includes the green-
house environmental data and the data acquisition unit com-
munication states, and the data transmission interval was set
to 1.0 min. The average data loss rate was 0.4%, and the max-
imum data loss rate was 0.5%. Therefore, the results showed
that the data communication mechanism for real-time and

Table 2 – Data transmission between the data acquisition unit and gateway.
Data acquisition unit ID Packets Sent Packets received Packets lost Packet loss rate (%)

f1 1440 1416 24 1.67

f2 1440 1422 18 1.25
f3 1440 1421 19 1.32
c1 1440 1414 26 1.81
e1 1440 1411 29 2.01
a1 1440 1430 10 0.69
BC000000 1440 1410 30 2.08
BC000001 1440 1413 27 1.88
BC000002 1440 1419 21 1.46
BC000003 1440 1418 22 1.53
BC000004 1440 1421 19 1.32
BC000005 1440 1422 18 1.25

Please cite this article as: J. Wang, M. Chen, J. Zhou et al., Data communication mechanism for greenhouse environment monitoring and control:
An agent-based IoT system, Information Processing in Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inpa.2019.11.002
 Information Processing in Agriculture
Table 3 – Data transmission from gateway to server.
Date Data Sent Data received
3–20 2880 2868
3–21 2880 2867
3–22 2880 2870
3–23 2880 2869
3–24 2880 2865
3–25 2880 2873
3–26 2880 2867
cumulative data synchronization based on the MAS can
reduce the data loss rate of the IoT system and improve the
data transmission stability [8,36].
In this research, the field tests were conducted for straw-
berry greenhouse real-time environmental acquisition and
control information. The packet loss rate is the main evalua-
tion indicator for the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) system
in the greenhouse [37]. As we all know, the structures of the
different types of greenhouses and crops influence the radio
wave propagation for a WSN [38]. Therefore, future work
should statistically analyse the data loss. It would be valuable
to know how the missing/waiting messages are concentrated
or not with the possible consequences for different crops.
6. Conclusion
This study presents a data communication mechanism to
achieve the adaptive matching of the data transmission pro-
tocol and provides the configuration of the acquisition and
control parameters in a greenhouse based on Agents. The
characteristics of the proposed system are the following.
(1) The system applies interoperable data encapsulation of
the greenhouse environmental acquisition and control
system based on XML that integrates the real-time
environmental acquisition data, the real-time control
data, and the configuration information of the acquisi-
tion and the control unit. Furthermore, the data
description method can improve the ability to effec-
tively communicate and transfer meaningful data and
can improve the success of distributed greenhouse
IoT infrastructures for highly varying systems.
(2) Agent-based data synchronization between the gate-
way and the server is achieved. The GatewayAgent
and ServerAgent were established to achieve the one-
way synchronization for the real-time acquisition and
control information and two-way synchronization for
the environmental acquisition and control unit config-
uration information. This synchronization mechanism
enabled the processing, encapsulation, transmission,
analysis and synchronization of the distributed infor-
mation communication for the greenhouse IoT system.
(3) An agent-based IoT management system for the green-
house motioning and control system was developed in
JADE. The data communication mechanism between
the gateway and the server was achieved based on
the behaviour of the MAS. According to those MAS
behaviours, the abilities to merge heterogeneous envi-
Please cite this article as: J. Wang, M. Chen, J. Zhou et al., Data communication mechanism for greenhouse environment monitoring and control:
An agent-based IoT system, Information Processing in Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inpa.2019.11.002
xxx (xxxx) xxx 11
Data Lost Data Loss rate
12 0.42%
13 0.45%
10 0.35%
11 0.38%
15 0.52%
7 0.24%
13 0.45%
ronmental acquisition and control data from the green-
house IoT system and initiate an appropriate response
were improved.
(4) A case study of the real-time and cumulative data syn-
chronization showed that the data synchronization
between the gateway and server was successfully
implemented. The field test results showed that the
data loss rate between the data acquisition unit and
gateway was 1.52%, and the data loss rate between
the gateway and server was 0.4%.
Our study indeed has some limitations. For the green-
house IoT system, we only used XML for data encapsulation;
however, JSON or another data encapsulation format is typi-
cally better for accomplishing data communication for a
greenhouse based on cloud computing and big data. Addi-
tionally, this study only focused on distributed environmental
monitoring and control, which concerns only the information
acquisition and transmission layers. However, the data com-
munication of all three layers must be considered, particu-
larly for decision support based on an intelligent control
model of the greenhouse.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declared that there is no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Jiangsu Provincial R&D Pro-
ject (BE2018321), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu
Provincial Department of Education (17KJA416002), the China
Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2015M580400), the Jiangsu
Province Postdoctoral Science Foundation (1501112B), and
the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu
Higher Education Institutions.
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