Thursday, January 11, 2007 - 4:30 PM

Wide Area Wireless Network for Supporting Precision Agriculture

James M. McKinion, Johnie N. Jenkins, and Jeffrey L. Willers. USDA-ARS-GAPARU, P. O. Box 5367, Mississippi State, MS 39762

A high speed wireless network was established using a 100 meter tall microwave tower as the base station located on Prairie Point Road, 16 km from Macon, MS in Noxubee County. Three sectorial antennas were used to provide complete 360 degree coverage. The system used state-of-the-art unlicensed digital radios in the 900 MHz band from Motorola, Inc. Internet service to the tower was provided by Teletec Communications,Inc. of Columbus, MS from their 125 meter tall antenna located in Coulumbus, which is 48 km from the Praire Point tower. The point-to-point link from Columbus to the Noxubee tower provided an18 Mbps bidirectional full duplex link. Each sector from the base station provided a total 4 Mbps data rate to the end users. Non-line-of-sight links were mapped out to a 16 km radius around the Prarie Point tower. This area covers most of Noxubee County, the southern part of Lowndes County, the northern part of Kemper County, all in Mississippi. The western part of Pickens County in Alabama was also covered. Under line-of-sight conditions, the range extends to a 65 km radius. Initially, four commercial cotton farms were provided service along with a commercial precision agiculture service provider in the non-line-of-sight area. This paper will provde details of how the service was set up and provided.

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