Wireless Data Fusion System for Agricultural Vehicle Positioning

A wireless data fusion system was designed to automatically collect and process operational data from agricultural machinery in order to provide real-time support for precision farming tasks. The system provides transparent data management and decision support functions to crop producers by wirelessly integrating a machinery-based sensing unit and an office-based data processing unit. The machinery-based unit collects the machine position and attitude data, the office-based unit performs data fusion to accurately estimate the machine position, and the wireless data-link transmits the data between the machinery- and the office-based units. Field tests indicate that this system can collect field data from the operating machinery and wirelessly send the raw data to a data-processing centre to acquire accurate machinery positioning data at a sampling rate of 50 Hz. The wireless data-link can transmit data between the machinery- and the office-based units at 2 Mb/s within a 3·2 km radius. Results verify that this newly developed wireless data fusion system is capable of handling field data in real-time to support data-intensive precision farming operations.