Resource Tradeoff Analysis of Plant Physiological Status Sensor with Cloud Connectivity

Measurements carried out in the field require power consumption planning so sufficient amount of measurements can be carried out without battery recharge. If instantaneous results report is expected, then communication and data storage, processing resources also have to be proportional to the load expected. Latency of the data transmission, processing and reporting should be maintained within acceptable limits. The plant physiological status estimation system 1 considered in this paper is for field application. It communicates with cloud service using the smartphone as intermediate node. Paper presents the analysis of the power consumption and data latency versus operational modes. Models have been developed, accounting the data acquisition algorithm and data transmission protocols. Analysis results can be used to estimate the sensor and gateway service life from one charge or maximum time between measurement initiation and report delivery. It was found that both sensor and gateway could sustain their operation from one charge over one day operation. As of latency, it was found that single core single server solution can maintain just few users simultaneously. More servers are needed for larger users pool: e.g. 200 servers are required to service 10000 users.