Leveraging Aboveground to Underground Backscatter IoT Communication via Event-based Data Streams

Wireless Underground Sensor Networks (WUSNs) have potential applications in precision agriculture for monitoring variables such as soil moisture, temperature, and nutrient levels. These systems offer highly scalable sensor networks, batteryless operation, and minimal environmental disruption. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology can be used to enable communication with passive sensing devices in various scenarios. This work utilizes the OATSMobile platform to enable RFID communications with WUSNs. The platform consists of a rough terrain vehicle, an interrogation device, and environmental sensing devices in a testbed setup. OATSMobile records and transmits sensor data streams to remote computing nodes over the internet via a cellular network connection. Using a data pipeline based on the Avena software framework, sensor reading events from passive buried transponders are captured to evaluate the feasibility of passive RFID communications with WUSNs. A measurement campaign was conducted with 194 buried transponders at depths of 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, and 30 cm, resulting in the automated recording of 8,973 reading events at a remote computing device.