Written by Andrew Wooden
Kit vendor Ericsson has built a 5G SA network for US researchers which will power data gathering connected robots, livestock monitoring and agricultural automation.
The 5G SA network is part of the Agriculture and Rural Communities (ARA) multi-modal platform for wireless research, based on the Iowa State University campus. The coverage extends to local crop and livestock farms and parts of the city of Ames.
The build consists of a 5G core operating in SA mode and NR radios which operate in both mid-band and millimeter wave spectrum bands, with a high aggregate throughput up to 3Gbps. The outdoor network will run 5G SA with mid and high band New Radio-Dual Connectivity (NR-DC) with a downlink exceeding 2.5Gbps in outdoor live testing.
All this bandwidth will be used to support precision agriculture applications, along with other research initiatives, and it has connected up farm sites that previously had little to no broadband access.
The research will include using connected robots (PhenoBots) to collect plant phenotyping data with stereoscopic cameras generating 800 megabits per second worth of sensor data per camera, livestock monitoring with high-resolution cameras, and agriculture automation.
