Over the past three decades,
agricultural machinery has made the transition from purely mechanical systems
to hybrid machines, reliant on both mechanical and electronic systems. A this
transformation continues, the most modern agricultural machinery uses networked
systems that require a network connection to function to their full potential. In
rural areas, providing this network connection has proven difficult. Obstacles,
distance from access points, and incomplete coverage of cellular connection are
all challenges to be overcome. “Off the shelf” commercial-grade Wi-Fi
equipment, including many products from Ubiquiti like the Bullet M2 transceiver
and the PowerBeam point-to-point linking system, as well as antennas by
Terrawave, Crane, and Hawking, were installed in a purpose-built system which
could be implemented on a production farm. This system consisted of a
tower-mounted access point which used an antenna with a 65<sup>o</sup>
beamwidth, and the test included distances up to 1150 meters in an agricultural
setting with corn and soybeans. Some sensors were stationary and the other
platform was a tractor following a path around the farm with both 8dBi and
15dBi gain antennas. Through all tests, throughput never dropped below 5 Mb/s,
and the latency of successful connections never exceeded 20ms. Packets were
rarely dropped and never accounted for a significant portion of all packet
transmission attempts. Environmental effects like immediate precipitation, crop
heights, recent rainfall, and ambient temperature had little or no effect on
wireless network characteristics. As a result, it was proven that as long as
line-of-sight was maintained, reliable wireless connectivity could be achieved
despite varying conditions using microwave radiation. Network throughput was
marginally affected by the change in free space path loss due to increased
distance between the access point and the client, as well as travel by the
mobile client outside the beamwidth of the access point. By enabling this coverage, it is hoped that the implementation of new
agricultural technology utilizing a live network connection will progress more
rapidly.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/11401296 |
| Date | 19 December 2019 |
| Creators | Paul Christian Thieme (8151186) |
| Source Sets | Purdue University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis |
| Rights | CC BY 4.0 |
| Relation | https://figshare.com/articles/Long-Range_High-Throughput_Wireless_Communication_Using_Microwave_Radiation_Across_Agricultural_Fields/11401296 |
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