Abstract
Wireless Underground Communication (WUC) is an emerging field that is being developed continuously. It provides secure mechanism of deploying nodes underground which shields them from any outside temperament or harsh weather conditions. This paper works towards introducing WUC and give a detail overview of WUC. It discusses system architecture of WUC along with the anatomy of the underground sensor motes deployed in WUC systems. It also compares Over-the-Air and Underground and highlights the major differences between the both type of channels. Since, UG communication is an evolving field, this paper also presents the evolution of the field along with the components and example UG wireless communication systems. Finally, the current research challenges of the system are presented for further improvement of the WUCs.
Keywords
Soil, Permittivity, Dielectric, Agriculture, Broadband antennas, Dipole antennas, Internet of Things, Moisture, Underground communication
Date of this Version
12-12-2020
Comments
This is the published version of Raza, U.; Salam, A. A Survey on Subsurface Signal Propagation. Smart Cities 2020, 3, 1513-1561. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities3040072
Published by MDPI with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.