Small-fading and Wideband Propagation Characteristics in Fruit Orchard at 2.4 GHz for Wireless Network in Smart Farming Application

Understanding the small-scale fading and wideband characteristics of radio propagation in the agriculture field is useful for designing and implementing the wireless network for the smart farming application. This paper describes these propagation characteristics in a jackfruit orchard representing the fruit orchard which is one of the common types of outdoor agriculture environments. The results are obtained through the measurement using a channel sounder having a bandwidth of 45.6 MHz at 2.45 GHz. The Rician K-factor and root-mean-square delay spread are studied for vegetation depths less than 40 m. The result reveals that the relationship between the Rician K-factor and its corresponding path loss value in each measurement point can be fitted with the log-linear line. This suggests the possibility of predicting the K-factor at any point in the orchard. The root-mean-square delay spread result ranges from 28 to 58 ns. Because of the independence of the vegetation depth and the magnitude of the vegetation obstruction, they are represented by the statistical model in which the Weibull distribution provides the best representation.