The demand for food is increasing alongside a growing population. Digital farming and smart ag technologies — autonomous equipment, sensors, artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics — will play a large role in the future of sustainable agricultural production. However, smart ag technologies are reliant on connectivity.
On the Olds College Smart Farm — a 3,600 acre farm of the future and cutting-edge learning environment — the Olds College Center for Innovation (OCCI) evaluates smart ag technologies in order to unlock the potential for farmers to make data-driven management decisions on their fields. Smart farming has the potential to use digital technologies for increasing efficiency of farming operations.
Olds College created Understanding & Measuring ‘Mobile Network Connectivity’ for Smart Farming for producers to explain the basics and evolution of cellular connectivity, and ways to measure signal strength. This will help producers better integrate, manage, and leverage ag technology for the enhancement and sustainability of agri-food production on their farms.
Cellular devices are only going to become more important and prevalent in our lives with continuous developing technology — and networks are rapidly evolving to make the most of the new technology.
First generation networks — now known as 1G — emerged in the early 1980s and only allowed voice calls to be made, suffered from reliability and signal interference issues, and had limited protection against hackers2 .
Based on an analogue technology known as Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS), which used Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) modulation, 1G networks offered a channel capacity of 30KHz and a speed of 2.4 kilobits per second (kbps).
2G networks were introduced in the early 1990s, and allowed users to send Short Messaging Service (SMS) or text services and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) messages or media added to text services. They were based on digital signaling technology, Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM), which increased security and capacity.
2G networks offered bandwidths of 30KHz to 200KHz and speeds up to 64kbps. Continuous improvement of GSM technology led to the introduction of the 2.5G which enabled data-rates up to 144kbps, and the ability to send and receive email messages and browse the web.
In the year 2000, mobile phones became more about social connectivity and less about voice calls. With its ability to transmit greater amounts of data at higher speeds, 3G enabled users to make video calls, surf the web, share files, play online games and even watch TV online.
Based on GSM, 3G networks supported high-speed data and data-rates up to 14 megabits per second (Mbps). Whereas 2G networks would enable a 3-minute MP3 song to be downloaded in around 6 to 9 minutes, the same file would take anywhere between 11 to 90 seconds to download on a 3G network. Today the most common use for 3G networks is as a backup for 4G.
The introduction of 4G ushered in the era of the smartphone and hand-held mobile device. 4G was the first generation to use Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology — which is displayed as LTE, LTE+ or LTE4G on devices. 4G/LTE has download speeds of 10Mbps to 1gigabits per second (Gbps) which equates to 1 billion bits of data per second, offering less buffering, improved voice quality, instant messaging services and social media, quality streaming, and faster download speeds.
4G/LTE is also the first IP-based mobile network which handles voice as just another service. The technology is being developed to accommodate the Quality of Service (QoS) and rate requirements required by applications such as wireless broadband access, MMS, video chat, mobile TV, HDTV content, Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB).
However, 4G networks soon began struggling with the heightened global demand for mobile bandwidth, higher speeds and faster networks due to emerging technologies — Augmented Reality (AR), autonomous vehicles and the exponential growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) — combined with the growing number of devices around the world.
In 2015, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) realized 4G/LTE networks will ultimately reach capacity and defined requirements specification for 5G.
5G networks can operate starting at 1 gigabit per second and can run up to 1,000 times faster than 4G.
TELUS 5G Network Comes to Olds College Smart Farm and Community
Telus 5G Coverage Map
Coverage areas are approximate; actual coverage, network services and technology can vary and are subject to change. Source: TELUS.
As cellular networks prepare to roll out 5G, they are continuing to shut down older systems.
Even though 2G was a revolutionary technology, it started getting phased out around the world in 2008 due to low bandwidth applications and customer demands — and 3G networks are next on the list.
Certain areas in rural Alberta are more remote and struggle with basic network and cell phone coverage.
The Olds College Smart Farm experiences connectivity issues in certain locations across its 3,600 acre commercial farm. In addition to commercial farming operations, researchers, instructors and students at Olds College use the Smart Farm for living lab experience and hands-on learning. However, connectivity issues prevent the full use of smart ag technology, full scale implementation of applied research projects, and the effective use of devices, sensors, and autonomous farming equipment.
On the Olds College Smart Farm, applied research and Smart Ag technology rely heavily on cellular connectivity. It is essential Smart Ag technology and equipment functions properly in order for the research team to perform their testing, evaluations and analysis.
Cellular coverage available to the equipment must meet certain criteria such as:
Over the last year, Olds College researchers came across a few instances where certain technologies failed due to performance issues or errors that couldn’t be traced back to on-board functionality, therefore, bad cellular connectivity was listed as the resulting factor.
These connectivity issues warranted further investigation in order for the Smart Farm to continue providing a product development and demonstration venue to accelerate agriculture technology and agri-food development.
Measured in Mbps, download speed experience represents the typical everyday speeds a user or device experiences across an operator’s mobile data networks when transferring data from a network onto a users device.
There are 3 main supporting metrics related to download speed:
3G Download Speed: The average downlink speed across an operator’s 3G connections (e.g. UMTS/HSPA or CDMA 1X EV-DO).
4G Download Speed: The average downlink speed across an operator’s 4G/LTE connections.
5G Download Speed: The average download speed for each operator on an active 5G connection.
Also measured in Mbps, this is defined as the average upload speeds observed for each operator or device across the mobile data networks when transferring data from a user's device to a network. Typically upload speeds are slower than download speeds, as current mobile broadband technologies focus resources on providing the best possible download speed for users consuming content on their devices.
There are three main supporting metrics that relate to uplink speed:
3G Upload Speed: The average uplink speed across an operator’s 3G connections (e.g. UMTS/HSPA or CDMA 1X EV-DO).
4G Upload Speed: The average uplink speed across an operator’s 4G/LTE connections.
5G Upload Speed: The average upload speed for each operator on an active 5G connection as experienced by users.
Latency refers to the delay experienced by users/devices as data makes a round trip through the network. If the latency of a network is high, the network will feel less responsive and be slower to react to your requests. Latency is measured in milliseconds, and it represents the typical delay a user experiences when connecting across an operator’s networks.
Latency has two supporting metrics:
4G Latency: The average latency users experience across an operator’s 4G/LTE connections.
3G Latency: The average latency users experience across an operator’s 3G connections (e.g. UMTS/HSPA or CDMA 1X EV-DO.
Signal strength is yet another important parameter in measuring cellular reception. The units for cellular signal strength are dBm (Decibel Milliwatt). Some cell phones will use another unit to measure the cellular signal strength called ASU (Arbitrary Strength Unit) which is an integer value proportional to the received signal strength measured by the mobile phone.
Users can try this on their cell phones to see the cell signal strength.
On your Android Cellphone, click Settings > About Phone > Status > Sim Status.
On your iPhone, Dial *3001#12345#* and a similar screen will appear that tells you the cell signal strength.
With more connected devices being developed every day, the traditional ‘cellular standards’ are not enough — especially since some of these devices have different types of connectivity requirements. For example, soil sensors transfer a few bytes of data everyday, but need a very low power consumption to run for a long time on the same set of batteries. Connected vehicles, like OMNiPOWER, stream a lot of data back to the cloud, but yet they are never going to make a voice call, so it needs a slightly different type of connectivity.
These connected devices give rise to the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT demands are unique and case dependent, and have led the industry to develop several categories within the LTE Standard which continue to evolve. Below are a few examples of these categories and there are more LTE categories listed here.
This standard reaches 50Mbps upload and 150Mbps download theoretical speeds, which are essentially the same speeds consumers get on their smartphones. Cat-4 is popular among IoT deployments, but it consumes more power and is more complex than Cat-1.
Source: Global Website Files.
Hopefully this content gave you an understanding about the basics and evolution of cellular connectivity and ways to measure signal strength. Longer-term, the College is hoping to evolve this content to ensure it contains up-to-date and relevant information to help farmers (and others) troubleshoot wireless devices and connectivity.
Please email us at OCCI@oldscollege.ca if you have any questions about this article on mobile network connectivity.
Written by Ravneet Singh, Senior Technology Specialist & Instructor, Werklund School of Agriculture Technology, Olds College - March 2022
