Exploring Wireless Channels in Rural Areas: A Comprehensive Measurement Study

TL;DR

Facing the paucity of rural wireless-channel data, this paper conducts an extensive measurement study of TVWS and mid-band channels across multiple farms in rural Iowa using the ARA PAWR platform. It combines fixed-location and portable UEs with weather sensing to quantify how rain rate, humidity, temperature, and farm-building blockages shape channel metrics such as path loss, SNR, and throughput. The key findings show rain rate drives attenuation more than raindrop size, humidity has a strong negative correlation with received power in the mid-band ($r=-0.94$) and temperature shows a strong positive correlation with TVWS ($r=0.91$), while farm structures can add substantial additional loss (e.g., hay piles up to ~12 dB). The work provides a publicly accessible, multi-modal dataset of timestamped wireless-channel measurements and weather data to support rural channel modeling and algorithm development for URLLC in agricultural settings.

Abstract

The study of wireless channel behavior has been an active research topic for many years. However, there exists a noticeable scarcity of studies focusing on wireless channel characteristics in rural areas. With the advancement of smart agriculture practices in rural regions, there has been an increasing demand for affordable, high-capacity, and low-latency wireless networks to support various precision agriculture applications such as plant phenotyping, livestock health monitoring, and agriculture automation. To address this research gap, we conducted a channel measurement study on multiple wireless frequency bands at various crop and livestock farms near Ames, Iowa, based on Iowa State University~(ISU)'s ARA Wireless Living lab - one of the NSF PAWR platforms. We specifically investigate the impact of weather conditions, humidity, temperature, and farm buildings on wireless channel behavior. The resulting measurement dataset, which will soon be made publicly accessible, represents a valuable resource for researchers interested in wireless channel prediction and optimization.

Figures (18)

• Figure 1: Antenna layout of the northwest sector.
• Figure 2: An ARA UE box deployed at a fixed location.
• Figure 3: Davis weather station (right) and WS100 disdrometer (left).
• Figure 4: A line-of-sight path of 0.94 miles between Wilson Hall BS and a fixed-location UE at the Curtiss Farm field.
• Figure 5: Three farms for portable UE measurements.