Nomadic Internet Connectivity under Forest Canopy

Inhalt:
Future IT applications will significantly contribute to the efficient and sustainable operation of forests, from planting over maintaining to tree harvesting. High-quality internet connectivity for forestry machines will be crucial for most of these IT applications. Within the forest, there is very restricted cellular coverage, and satellite internet is barely usable due to obstructed sight to the sky. Therefore, this paper investigates the use of mobile internet technologies at elevated altitudes. Using tethered drones, radio technology can be elevated above the canopy, significantly improving permanent cellular connectivity and providing a clear sky view. The drone acts as a radio relay. End devices are locally connected using other technologies such as 5G campus networks or directional WiFi. In an experimental setup, a tethered drone equipped with a 5G router for backend connectivity and directional WiFi for local connectivity is used. Measurements were carried out in the forest at various heights. As expected, results demonstrate that mobile connectivity above treetops improves overall connectivity, due to reaching more cellular base stations in the vicinity, particularly including higher bandwidth base stations. With directional WiFi, ranges up to 1 km for local connectivity were achieved at flight altitudes above 40 m in the forest.