Research and Development of Automatic Monitoring System for Livestock Farms
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors present a paper showing a system for monitoring pig farms to replace traditional manual data collection. They detailled the used sensors and present a good set of data. There are some comments aimed to improve the quality of the paper:
1- Clearly, indicate the aim/motivation of the paper in the introduction
2- Include a paragraph at the end of the introduction detailing the structure of the rest of the paper section by section.
3- Add a related work section where your present the similar experiments carries out by other researchers and point the gap on the current technologies that you are covering with your contribution. The text of lines 71 to 77 is a good beginning for this section. Moreover, authors must add at least 8 more references presenting the use of sensors for animals monitoring, they can find some examples below:
a. Llario, F., Sendra, S., Parra, L., & Lloret, J. (2013, June). Detection and protection of the attacks to the sheep and goats using an intelligent wireless sensor network. In 2013 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops (ICC) (pp. 1015-1019). IEEE.
b. Parra, L., Sendra, S., García, L., & Lloret, J. (2018). Design and deployment of low-cost sensors for monitoring the water quality and fish behavior in aquaculture tanks during the feeding process. Sensors, 18(3), 750.
c. Loreti, P., Catini, A., Luca, M. D., Bracciale, L., Gentile, G., & Natale, C. D. (2018). Ultra Low Power Wireless Sensor Network for Pink Iguanas Monitoring. In Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute Proceedings (Vol. 2, No. 13, p. 978).
4- Please include the scale bar in the maps, same for aerial photo
5- If figure 8 is obtained from the paper [21] authors must redraw it. They cannot use a Figure from another paper.
6- All the tables must be corrected. They must have the name and units of both axes. Moreover, I recommend removing the black line that involves Figures.
7- In the conclusion section, authors have to include future works.
8- Finally, there are several references too old, I encourage the authors to change them and use references from the last 10 years.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Thank you very much for your review and suggestion.
Point 1: Add a related work section where your present the similar experiments carries out by other researchers and point the gap on the current technologies that you are covering with your contribution. The text of lines 71 to 77 is a good beginning for this section. Moreover, authors must add at least 8 more references presenting the use of sensors for animals monitoring, they can find some examples below:
Response 1: We have been amended as suggested in the text of lines 76 to 81 and lines 467 to 477.
Point 2: Please include the scale bar in the maps, same for aerial photo
Response 2: We have been completed the aerial photo with scale bar in the figure 1.
Point 3: If figure 8 is obtained from the paper [21] authors must redraw it. They cannot use a Figure from another paper.
Response 3: Figure 8 have been completed redrawing in the text.
Point 4: All the tables must be corrected. They must have the name and units of both axes. Moreover, I recommend removing the black line that involves Figures.
Response 4: All the tables and Figures have been amended in accordance with your recommendations.
Point 5: In the conclusion section, authors have to include future works.
Response 5: We have been amended as suggested in the text of lines 404 to 406.
Point 6: Finally, there are several references too old, I encourage the authors to change them and use references from the last 10 years.
Response 5: We have been amended as suggested in the text of references 24, 27, 30.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The research is supported by a strong motivation, clearly demonstrated in the Introduction with several studies being cited related to the livestock farming and the decrease of population in Taiwan. In the same section, the authors present an array of helpful technologies to sort out some of the problems the study has faced (wireless technologies).
On the System Architecture, it is presented some effective work on the study of the proposed WSN in an experimental environment, as well as the design and structure of the network components.
Considering all the work and strong motivation, as mentioned previously, the reported research information is focused mainly on the PLC programming and does not provide a scientific support to the initial propose and contributions. From the point of view of the architecture, it would be important to evaluate the decisions taken or validate them with at least some simulation analysis, at this stage.
In regard to Results and Discussion, the majority of the section is focused on establishing the correlation between the livestock farming yields and the weather/environment parameters, which are rather unrelated to the expected contributions of the study. It would be interesting to see a correlation between the proposed automatic system versus the man-powered control. Also, the sixth conclusion identifies a gap in the wireless architecture that should have been addressed on the research stage, for instance with the help of a simulation analysis of the wireless technologies.
Additionally, as future work, the authors should provide their input on the feasibility of the proposed architecture to be considered for the deployment in other livestock farms. Both provided architecture and results seem to be limited to the case study, with little considerations for scalability and diversity.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Point 1: Considering all the work and strong motivation, as mentioned previously, the reported research information is focused mainly on the PLC programming and does not provide a scientific support to the initial propose and contributions. From the point of view of the architecture, it would be important to evaluate the decisions taken or validate them with at least some simulation analysis, at this stage.
Response 1: Thanks a lot for the suggestion. This article is firstly aimed to propose an analysis experimental environment for livestock farming system, based on the integration of software and hardware facilities, as shown in section 3. Some analyses results have been presented in section 4. As to the comments, we will present it in the future works. As soon as the rich data have collected, we will propose a close-loop control system to enhance the outcome in the livestock farms and comparing them with the simulation results.
Point 2: In regard to Results and Discussion, the majority of the section is focused on establishing the correlation between the livestock farming yields and the weather/environment parameters, which are rather unrelated to the expected contributions of the study. It would be interesting to see a correlation between the proposed automatic system versus the man-powered control. Also, the sixth conclusion identifies a gap in the wireless architecture that should have been addressed on the research stage, for instance with the help of a simulation analysis of the wireless technologies.
Response 2: We deeply appreciate the comments. The instability of the wireless communication has been solved by the additional antenna with the strong signal strength, as presented in line 249 to 254 of page 9. In the future, the simulation analysis will be studied by the ANSYS HFSS software to obtain the adequate environment for wireless communication.
Point 3: Additionally, as future work, the authors should provide their input on the feasibility of the proposed architecture to be considered for the deployment in other livestock farms. Both provided architecture and results seem to be limited to the case study, with little considerations for scalability and diversity.
Response 3: Thank you very much for the comments. We have added in the line 404 to 407 page 16. This article aims to contribute to fostering the development of a web-based remote control of a building system with uniform Ethernet technology, acting as a user resource for both practitioners and researchers in the design of integrating sensors, actuators, securities, and controllers needed to develop their activities. This integration of software, hardware, and control mechanisms has created a successful example of a smart building, which can easily be adjusted for use in factories and domestic buildings. In the future, home energy management will be studied by optimal analysis approaches as the data collected are rich enough.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors must revise the english in the phrase "Finally,..." at the lines 402 to 405. Some examples of English changes required:
"they will be interesting future works(...)" - who are the authors referring to?
"(...)problem of the (...) was affected by obstacles" - sentence is confusing.
"(...), and to combine (..), and the (...)" - too many "and" and overall sentence is too big. Authors must break into several sentences and rephrase it.
Author Response
Point 1: The authors must revise the english in the phrase "Finally,..." at the lines 402 to 405. Some examples of English changes required:
"they will be interesting future works(...)" - who are the authors referring to?
"(...)problem of the (...) was affected by obstacles" - sentence is confusing.
"(...), and to combine (..), and the (...)" - too many "and" and overall sentence is too big. Authors must break into several sentences and rephrase it.
Response 1: We deeply appreciate the comments. We have rewritten the sentence in the lines 401 to 405 of page 16.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
