Mobile land-based campus networks: Design of the test infrastructure for nomadic radio networks used in agriculture (Graphic: TU Dresden).

Since 2017, scientists at TU Dresden have been conducting research in the LANDNETZ and Field Swarm projects. At the end of September 2021, the field day “LANDNETZ meets Field Swarm – Experience tomorrow’s agriculture, today” took place at the Raitzen estate in Naundorf/Germany.

Together with the Saxon State Office for the Environment, Agriculture and Geology (LfULG) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Transport and Infrastructure Systems IVI, new technologies for area-wide wireless data transmission and networking are being tested in practice in LANDNETZ as a fundamental condition for Agriculture 4.0. In the test field, numerous digital agricultural applications are designed, tested and optimised in cooperation with practical farms. The field swarm – these are small, intelligent machine units that can be flexibly combined and thus easily adapted to local field conditions. Instead of six to twelve metres working width, the field swarm consortium couples two or three technical units of the field swarm and thus makes productivity in agriculture more scalable again. The new field tillage technology is thus not only highly adaptable and highly automated, but also protects the soil while maintaining the same yield and increases the quality of the tillage while saving diesel fuel.

5G is a cornerstone technology in this trial field. Fittingly, the first site-fixed 5G mobile communications campus network for use in agriculture was put into operation in Germany at the beginning of October at the Köllitsch teaching and experimental farm. This agricultural campus network comprises a 5G radio cell installed as a compact roof construction and a mobile trailer with a directional radio antenna. Now, modern digitalisation applications can be tested, optimised and demonstrated in Köllitsch. In particular, those that rely on the three essential properties of 5G – high bandwidth, low latency and the use of a large number of sensors – such as UAV-based online applications.

In the white paper LANDNETZ Impulse, current networking solutions used in agriculture are highlighted and an alternative solution approach for digital applications in agriculture is presented with mobile radio campus networks. The data collected in the course of digital processes require both secure processing and secure exchange. Under this aspect, the question of data sovereignty will be discussed and current trends and possibilities for the secure exchange of data will be shown. In the experimental field LANDNETZ, digital use cases in animal husbandry, fruit and wine growing as well as plant cultivation are designed, tested and optimised in interaction with numerous cooperation partners. Three use cases round off the white paper with regard to the communication infrastructure and data exchange required in each case.