Nomadic 5G Network with Satellite Based Internet Connectivity for Agriculture

The automation of the agricultural sector is continuously evolving. Especially communication plays a key role for the future agriculture 4.0 transformation. The coordination of agricultural machinery and the increasing usage of robots demands reliable communication. However, in rural areas a sufficient coverage by mobile networks is often not guaranteed. This paper addresses this issue by development of a portable standalone 5G nomadic network with satellite connectivity, which is optimized for agricultural use cases. The approach includes the use of Real Time Kinematic (RTK) for exact positioning, internet backhauling, and a concept for automatic frequency allocation. The proposed nomadic network architecture has been built and tested in a real-world scenario on an agricultural yard in Germany. It was shown that such a network can empower the agricultural transformation in different ways.