IoT for Agrifood: Enhanced METROFOOD-IT Facility at UNINA

The use of IoT sensors offers significant potential in the agrifood sector. For instance, in precision agriculture, sensors enable precise and real-time monitoring of soil conditions, humidity, temperature, and other environmental parameters. These capabilities allow agricultural practices to be adapted to the specific needs of crops and optimize the use of resources such as water, fertilizers, and pesticides, reducing waste and increasing productivity while enabling timely identification of issues. Furthermore, IoT sensors also ensure product traceability along the entire agrifood supply chain by recording real-time data. However, alongside its potential, the adoption of IoT sensors also presents significant challenges, including network connectivity and coverage, battery life and autonomy, data reliability and accuracy, security, and device interoperability. All these challenges can be addressed through technology advancements, optimal design, and device performance verification.

To this end, the UNINA4 Operating Unit “Advanced engineered solutions for reliable data” has strengthened the "Measurement Facility" at the CeSMA of the University of Naples Federico II with two new measurement instruments, acquired with funding from the METROFOOD-IT project.

These solutions will provide services for the testing and calibration of IoT devices and innovative engineering solutions, with a particular focus on sensors, energy consumption, and communication protocols for devices intended for agrifood applications.

More specifically, the laboratory upgrade involved the acquisition of:

• A 7.5-digit DMM7510 multimeter from TEKTRONIX, which combines a high-resolution digital multimeter (DMM), a graphical touchscreen display, and a high-speed, high-resolution digitizer. With sensitivity at the pA level and a sampling rate of 1 Msample/s, it enables precise measurements of very low currents in devices in sleep mode as well as in IoT device transmission and reception.
• A low-profile N6700C modular power system from Keysight, configured with a 2-quadrant module (ranging 20 V/1 A or 6 V/3 A, totaling 20 W) and dedicated software, to perform advanced analyses of consumption, emulation, and profile creation for battery-powered devices (such as those used in IoT).