On The Application Of Radio Planning Tools In Open Environments For The Improvement Of Autoguidance Systems Used In Precision Agriculture

Real Time Kinematic (RTK) systems, together with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) networks, are realtime location systems that are widely used in precision agriculture for autoguidance systems in farm vehicles. The RTK uses a reference signal from a base station, and the accuracy of the autoguidance system depends strongly on the signal quality arriving at the receiver that is installed in the vehicle or rover. In this paper, the relationship between the accuracy of the autoguidance systems and the propagation losses between the vehicle and the reference station is studied. The Covermap software tool, which was developed by the authors and validated with measurements, is used to determine the propagation losses. The advantage of this tool is that it allows analyzing any environment because it uses real geographical terrain data obtained from OpenStreetMap. In addition, the results are obtained instantaneously. A study was performed to analyze if the use of the Covermap tool in open environments improves the accuracy of guidance systems. In the study, an agricultural vehicle was connected to different reference stations, also called CORS (Continuously Operating Reference Stations), near the work location. The relationship between the propagation losses predicted by Covermap and the vehicle's drift when connecting to each of these stations was determined. The stations that presented lower propagation losses resulted in less drift. This kind of software tools are very useful for determining the best reference station to which the rover should connect at any moment not according to the criterion of proximity but rather according to propagation losses.