Connecting Plants and Soil through Low-data-rate Underground Sensing and High-data-rate In-Field Autonomy to Grow More Crop for Drop | Mehmet Can Vuran
Oct 05, 2023 | 4:00 PM CET
About Topic:
The increasing global food demand necessitates advancements in precision agriculture, underscoring the importance of understanding the relationship between soil and plants. This talk focuses on the interconnectedness of the agricultural environment and its operational elements through the Agricultural Internet of Things (Ag-IoT) as a powerful solution to address food production challenges. The innovations in low-power wireless communications and sensing have made deploying sensors below the soil surface feasible. These sensors directly link the soil conditions and plant responses, enabling real-time monitoring of their interaction. We will discuss the technical aspects of wireless communication within these underground settings, outlining both the potential and challenges of data transmission in underground environments. Moreover, our research findings from extensive field experiments will be presented, highlighting the influence of specific crops, such as corn and soybeans, on the millimeter-wave (mmWave) channel. Understanding these interactions is pivotal in realizing high-speed agricultural networks that could reshape how we approach autonomous farming operations. The interconnectedness of soil and plants highlights the role of heterogeneous Ag-IoT systems in enhancing our understanding and management of this vital relationship in the face of growing food production challenges. The talk will conclude by discussing future challenges for Ag-IoT and emphasizing its transformative potential to revolutionize the agricultural sector, optimize resource allocation, and effectively address future food production challenges.
About Speaker:
Mehmet Can (Jon) Vuran received his B.Sc. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey 2002. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2004 and 2007, respectively.
He is the Dale M. Jensen Professor of Computing in the School of Computing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Prof. Vuran received an NSF CAREER award in 2010 for “Bringing Wireless Sensor Networks Underground” and was named a “highly-cited researcher in Computer Science” three years in a row by Thomson Reuters "in recognition of ranking among the top 1% of researchers for most cited documents in Computer Science". He is a National Strategic Research Institute (NSRI) Fellow and a Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute (WFI) fellow. Prof. Vuran is the co-author of the Wireless Sensor Networks textbook, TPC Co-Chair of IEEE INFOCOM 2020, and an editor in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, and IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials Journal. His research interests include the 6G Internet of Things; wireless underground, mmWave, and THz communications in challenging environments; agricultural Internet of Things; dynamic spectrum access; connected autonomous systems; and cyber-physical networking.