Wireless underground channel diversity reception with multiple antennas for internet of underground things

Abstract

Internet of underground things (IOUT) is an emerging paradigm which consists of sensors and communication devices, partly or completely buried underground for real-time soil sensing and monitoring. In this paper, the performance of different modulation schemes in IOUT communications is studied through simulations and experiments. The spatial modularity of direct, lateral, and reflected components of the UG channel is exploited by using multiple antennas. First, it has been shown that bit error rates of 10 −3 can be achieved with normalized delay spreads (τ d) lower than 0.05. Evaluations are conducted through the first software-defined radio-based field experiments for UG channel. Moreover, equalization has a significant impact on the performance improvement of an IOUT system. An 8-Tap DFE (decision-feedback equalizer) adaptive equalizer achieves better performance. It is also found that DBPSK, and DPSK are more suitable for digital communications in the UG channel without adaptive equalization. Then, two novel UG receiver designs, namely, 3W-Rake and Lateral-Direct-Reflected (LDR) are developed and analyzed for performance improvement. It has been shown that with a three antenna LDR design, BER of lower than 10 −5 can be achieved. The BER of these two approaches are compared and the LDR has been shown to perform better.

On-Site and External Energy Harvesting in Underground Wireless

“…Energy sources are the natural and environmental phenomenon that one can use to harvest energy, e.g., radiant energy sources, kinetic energy sources. Next, we discuss some of the important energy sources that can be used to extract energy in WUSN [99,100].…”

Internet of Things in Smart Agriculture: Enabling Technologies

“…Precision agriculture [4], [20], [3], [8], [10], [12], [19], [20], [24], [36], [38], [35], [37], [32], [34], [26], [27], [28], [29], [25], [31], [33], [30], [41] [42], [43], [44], is the area in which technology can be used to effectively manage agriculture by understanding the temporal and spatial changes in soil, crop, production, and management through innovative techniques. The emerging Information Age will significantly affect the way we conduct and teach precision agriculture in universities and institutes of higher education.…”

Internet of underground things: Sensing and communications on the field for precision agriculture

“…Integration of UG communications with IOUT will help conserve water resources and improve crop yields [3], [4]. Moreover, advances in IOUT will benefit other applications including landslide monitoring, pipeline assessment, underground mining, and border patrol [2], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10].…”