Communication and agricultural equipment - From embedded system to wireless ad hoc network to integrate agricultural equipment in the extended information systems

Abstract

In an agricultural, environmental and economical context in full evolution, new agricultural stakes related to the follow-up of the practices and productions arise. More and more information relating to the practices and the productions are necessary. The use of new communication and information technologies makes it possible to answer these needs. With the development of the wired or wireless communication networks (ISObus on agricultural equipment, Bluetooth, Wifi) for the connections between equipment, the acquisition and the communication of the data become easy and automatic. Thus, the management and the use of the data collected in space reference information systems can be set up gradually. After a history recalling the evolution of the embedded electronics on agricultural equipment and the communication area network starting with ISO11783 or ISOBus specifications, this paper accounts the CAN ISOBus implementation level on agricultural equipment shown at SIMA 2003 (Paris) and the opportunities about a network realisation with agricultural equipment.