5G on the Farm: Evaluating Wireless Network Capabilities and Needs for Agricultural Robotics

Abstract

Global food security is a critical issue today, strained by a wide range of factors including global warming, carbon emissions, sociopolitical and economic challenges, traditional workforce decline and population growth. Technical innovations that address food security, like agricultural robotics, are gaining traction in industry settings, moving from controlled labs and experimental test facilities to real-world environments. Such technologies require sufficient network infrastructure to support in-field operations; thus, there is increased urgency to establish reliable, high-speed wireless communication networking solutions that enable deployment of autonomous agri-robots. The work presented here includes two contributions at the intersection of network infrastructure and in-field agricultural robotics. First, the physical performance of a private 5G-SA system in an agri-robotics application is evaluated and in-field experimental results are presented. These results are compared (using the same experimental setup) against public 4G and private WiFi6 (a newly emerging wireless communication standard). Second, a simulated experiment was performed to assess the “real-time” operational delay in critical tasks that may require quick turnaround between in-field robot and off-board processing. The results demonstrate that public 4G cannot be used in the agricultural domain for applications that require high throughput and reliable communication; that private 5G-SA greatly outperforms public 4G in all performance metrics (as expected); and that private WiFi6, though limited in range, is a fast and very reliable alternative in specific settings. While a single wireless solution does not currently exist for the agricultural domain, multiple technologies can be combined in a hybrid solution that meets the communications requirements.