A promising trend for field information collection: An air-ground multi-sensor monitoring system

Timely identifying and quantifying significant spatial and temporal variability in agricultural field has been a crucial factor for improving agricultural production and management. This paper focuses on the mainstream techniques and applications can be adopted to improve the field information collection method. In this paper, the development of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and remote sensing (RS) technology were reviewed, especially the micro unmanned aerial vehicle (mUAV)-based WSNs and mUAV-based RS by analyzing its applications in field information collection, and pointed out its existing benefits and limitations. A system encompassed multiple technique approaches was proposed in this paper which is called air-ground multi-sensor monitoring system. With the diversification methods of in-field information collection and the improvement of detection precision, an in-field information collection system will play an important role in controlling the farming operations of mechanized agriculture and optimizing the management of agricultural machinery group. In the future, the combination of mUAV, WSNs and RS for crop and soil monitoring will become a powerful tool to obtain field information, increase production, optimize the overall farming practices and input of resources and provide comprehensive reference for the study of soil-crops-machine relationships.