Embedded Systems for Precision Agriculture Monitoring: An Electronics Designer’s Perspective

Smart agriculture is increasingly relying on distributed monitoring systems and artificial intelligence to improve crop productivity, resource efficiency, and environmental sustainability. However, the implementation of autonomous sensor nodes still requires the integration of multiple and heterogeneous components, resulting in increased devices complexity, cost, and power consumption. This paper highlights the architecture of modern precision agriculture sensor nodes from the perspective of the embedded-system designer with particular attention to the opportunities that may advance Very Large-Scale Integration (VLSI) and System-on-Chip (SoC) technologies may offer in future. We discuss current technological limitations and integration bottlenecks, such as the lack of highly integrated platforms that combine sensing, processing, communication, and energy-management functionalities within a single SoC. Finally, we present this work with the aim of suggesting the next generation of AI-ready SoC devices for agricultural monitoring systems.