WSN Monitoring for Agriculture: Comparing SNMP and Emerging CoAP Approaches

The IPv6 protocol adaptation for the Wireless Sensor Network (6LoWPAN) enables the reuse of the TCP/IP application layer in WSN environment. It has been shown that the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) originally envisioned for monitoring & managing hosts on the internet can be adapted for the 6LoWPAN networks. Also, IETF Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP), designed specifically for machine-to-machine application scenario, is emerging as an open application layer specification for resource constrained networks. In this paper, we compare SNMP and CoAP-based WSN monitoring approaches in agricultural field deployments connecting to ERNET IPv6 backbone network. We present the results comparing these two approaches in terms of protocol features, ease-of-use and memory footprint.