HOAR: A hybrid-opportunistic architecture for robust agricultural networking

Modern telemetry-based applications enable farmers to work more efficiently and to improve the utilization of their farmland. However, connectivity between agricultural machines and central farm management information systems is almost exclusively realized via mobile networks and, thus, suffers from the challenging network conditions, which often characterize agricultural scenarios. Robust networking with reliable communication across multiple machines is one of the fundamental challenges in highly distributed agricultural processes, such as the harvesting of crops. In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of a new hybrid-opportunistic network architecture that combines multiple Internet and ad-hoc machine-to-machine (M2M) connections simultaneously to provide robust and reliable communication in a decentralized network.