TY - GEN
T1 - Evaluating effect of foliage on link reliability of wireless signal
AU - Ngandu, G.
AU - Nomatungulula, C.
AU - Rimer, S.
AU - Paul, B. S.
AU - Ouahada, K.
AU - Twala, B.
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Applications of low cost wireless sensor nodes in precision agriculture are being gradually adopted by commercial agricultural cooperatives as part of the continuing industrialisation of commercial agriculture. Current applications require extensive testing and experimentation to ensure reliable message transmission, because the transmitted wireless signal is scattered by the surrounding foliage. Network topology and node density is not optimized. In this paper, experiments to determine the effect of surrounding vegetation on the wireless signal in terms of link reliability, and signal strength for three different types of agricultural crops, namely, ground foliage, medium height and density vegetation, and very dense types of foliage is analyzed and discussed. The objective is to demonstrate that current radio propagation foliage loss models are not optimised for use in precision agriculture.
AB - Applications of low cost wireless sensor nodes in precision agriculture are being gradually adopted by commercial agricultural cooperatives as part of the continuing industrialisation of commercial agriculture. Current applications require extensive testing and experimentation to ensure reliable message transmission, because the transmitted wireless signal is scattered by the surrounding foliage. Network topology and node density is not optimized. In this paper, experiments to determine the effect of surrounding vegetation on the wireless signal in terms of link reliability, and signal strength for three different types of agricultural crops, namely, ground foliage, medium height and density vegetation, and very dense types of foliage is analyzed and discussed. The objective is to demonstrate that current radio propagation foliage loss models are not optimised for use in precision agriculture.
KW - distance
KW - link reliability
KW - precision agriculture
KW - scattering
KW - wireless sensor networks
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84877615001&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ICIT.2013.6505899
DO - 10.1109/ICIT.2013.6505899
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84877615001
SN - 9781467345699
T3 - Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology
SP - 1528
EP - 1533
BT - Proceedings - 2013 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology, ICIT 2013
T2 - 2013 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology, ICIT 2013
Y2 - 25 February 2013 through 28 February 2013
ER -
