Wireless Networking And Remote Sensor Monitoring For Pivot Irrigation

By Dan Steele, FreeWave Technologies, Inc.

As the automation of both private and corporate farms is embraced, we see the use of sophisticated pivot irrigation systems and smart agriculture practices due to new technologies. The human imagination continues to create new ways to use this technology and push those technology providers for more powerful tools. Ten to 15 years ago, even the most advanced automated pivot systems seldom used telemetry, and, if they did, the data throughput was extremely slow and seldom provided coverage to all the pivot irrigation sites. Some of the wireless technology also was expensive. Therefore, the telemetry technology was difficult to use effectively because only some sites could be remotely monitored or where farms were paying by the data byte or monthly usage fees to the technology provider.