Propagation analysis in Precision Agriculture environment using XBee devices

Precision Agriculture (PA) is a method for estimating, assessing and controlling agricultural practices. It emerged from the need for technologies to collect and transmitt data in agricultural areas. On the other hand, the evolution of wireless sensor nodes technology enabled the deployment of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) in agricultural environments. The lack of path loss models for predicting attenuation in vineyard vegetation motivates the study of propagation in this kind of environment. Thus, the objective of this research is to assess signal propagation in a vineyard. In this paper, the impact of different propagation directions was assessed considering the angle between the transmission path and the crop rows (θ). From the experiments, it was possible to find the main attenuation factors of the plantation field and obtain a path loss prediction model that fits well to measurements.