Large-scale farm sensing system using UAV and long-distance wireless communication

Abstract

In recent years, countries where agriculture is a major industry own vast tracts of farmland, and IoT system to improve the efficiency of farming operations on the vast farmland are attracting attention. In order to collect environmental information from anyway of the vast farmland, the construction of sensor networks using LPWA that enables long-distance communication has been attracting attention. However, many obstacles such as crops and agricultural machinery on the farm makes long-distance wireless communication difficult even when using the LPWA. In addition, even when the clear line of sight from the sensor nodes is ensured, the radio waves may interfere with each other, which makes the gateway impossible to receive the sensor data correctly.Therefore, in this research, we develop a sensor network system using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) that can move freely in the sky. The UAV works as a gateway to collect the sensor data from the sensor nodes and move autonomously for searching the locations where they can maintain good communication property from sensor nodes dispersed over a wide area of a large farm. Furthermore, in order to improve the efficiency of the sensor data retrieval, the sensor nodes within the same area of the farm construct clusters and select one representative node in each cluster. In addition, in order to prevent radio interference caused by simultaneous data transmission, the sensor nodes are implements media access control mechanism for LPWA.