System Assessment of WUSN Using NB-IoT UAV-Aided Networks in Potato Crops

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are part of precision agriculture; also, their impact on fast deployable wireless communication is offering new solutions and systems never envisioned before such as collecting information from underground sensors by using low power Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. In this paper, we propose a (Narrow Band IoT) NB-IoT system for collecting underground soil parameters in potato crops using a UAV-aided network. To this end, a simulation tool implementing a gateway mounted on a UAV using NB-IoT based access network and LTE based backhaul network is developed. This tool evaluates the performance of a realistic scenario in a potato field near Bogota, Colombia, accounting for real size packets in a complete IoT application. While computing the wireless link quality, it allocates access and backhaul resources simultaneously based on the technologies used. We compare the performance of wireless underground sensors buried in dry and wet soils at four different depths. Results show that a single drone with 50 seconds of flight time could satisfy more than 2000 sensors deployed in a 20 hectares field, depending on the buried depth and soil characteristics. We found that an optimal flight altitude is located between 60 m and 80 m for buried sensors. Moreover, we establish that the water content reduces the maximum reachable buried depth from 70 cm in dry soils, down to 30 cm in wet ones. Besides, we found that in the proposed scenario, sensors' battery life could last up to 82 months for above ground sensors and 77 months for the deepest buried ones. Finally, we discuss the influence of the sensor's density and buried depth, the flight service time and altitude in power-constrained conditions and we propose optimal configuration to improve system performance. INDEX TERMS Precision agriculture, NB-IoT, unmanned aerial vehicles, wireless underground sensor networks.

A Low-Cost Platform for Environmental Smart Farming Monitoring System Based on IoT and UAVs

“…A Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT) system is proposed in [33] to collect underground soil parameters in potato crops using a UAV network. Around 2500 sensors deployed under and above ground are connected to UAV using Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Network (LPWPAN).…”

The Rise of Drones in Internet of Things: A Survey on the Evolution, Prospects and Challenges of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

“…Supporting it, is [62], where the authors discuss how UAVs play a great role in transforming the farming sector. This in turn has led to a rise in a new domain known as precision farming that is quickly gaining attention of the scientific communities, one recent example is in [63] where the authors propose a narrow-band IoT UAV-aided networks to study various soil parameters previously not feasible to investigate.…”

Emerging Line of Research Approach in Precision Agriculture: An Insight Study

“…The study has also analyzed various timedomain attributes, e.g., gain in multipath power, channel capacity, delay, etc. A study on a similar direction towards the underground ecosystem is also investigated by Castellanos et al [82], where soil parameters are collected using a narrowband communication scheme of Long Term Evolution (LTE). The study uses unmanned aerial vehicles to collect data from underground sensors over the potato crop field.…”