EFITA 2003 Conference 5-9. July 2003, Debrecen, Hungary 899 AD HOC NETWORK FOR AGRICULTURE J.P. Chanet 1 (jean-pierre.chanet@cemagref.fr), D. Boffety 1 , J. Li 2 ,F. Pinet 2 , P. Gerbe 3 , M. Schneider 2 , F. Vigier 1 , K.M. Hou 2 1 Cemagref 24 Av. des Landais 63172 Aubière France 2 LIMOS BP 1025 63173 Aubière France 3 IGN, 2/4 avenue Pasteur, 94165 Saint Mandé cedex France Nowadays, farmers just as any other industrial actors have to manage a large amount of information, such as product and field properties, declaration of activities… Until recently, manual data management was possible. However, the complexity and volume of exchanges, as well as the number of intervening actors force the farmers to gradually set up Information Systems (IS) because data like agricultural map can’t be managed manually... IS for agriculture comprises an additional dimension in comparison with those used in a traditional industrial framework. Indeed, IS are conceivable in the agricultural domain only if one considers the space dimension of the problem: product and practice must be localized in space and in time. To cope with these data management needs, many solutions have been proposed and have emerged, each targeting a particular aspect of the problem, but there is no global solution. This has lead to the development of a wide range of solutions, with partially overlapping and redundant functionalities, when they are integrated into a framework. Hence, there is a need to find new solutions on the Inter-working of Agricultural Geographical Information systems, allowing interconnection of heterogeneous space-time information (like fertilization) from and for multiple actors of the agricultural world [1]. The farmer uses many systems of data acquisition in the day-to-day management of his activities: observation of the practices, crop and harvest, weather, instruction of agricultural technicians… A wide range of different and heterogeneous information technologies are currently used at farmers exploitations. The common to all these equipments is that they are clients (with the client-server meaning) of IS of the farm. Each client combines the following functionalities: data-processing, positioning (GPS) and a means of communication. Indeed, in the case of agriculture, the data must be localized (we must know where the data was measured/collected) and shared between the different tools and users while equipment must be able to be connected to a network. Thus a farm may be considered as an intranet/extranet having at lest a server (the IS), and various forms of clients. The term network is to be taken in the broad sense and it can include various technologies such as wireless technologies (WiFi, satellite ...) then it is possible to exchange information between data gathering and processing equipment installed on agricultural machinery [2]. The objective of our work is focused on the development of an ad hoc network based on the standard wireless technologies (IEEE802.11x and Bluetooth) taking into account the mobility and the localization of the equipments … Each equipment of the network is a node which can receive, send or transmit information to another node [3]. Thus information can be carried in real-time between the field and the farm or any authorized actors. REFERENCE [1] J. Efken, "Computer-based networks; perspectives for agriculture - Considerations about the possible future role of Internet or similar computer-based networks for farmers," Landbauforschung Volkenrode, vol. 48, pp. 159-167, 1998. [2] K. Charvat, J. Fryml, S. Holy, P. Gnip, Z. Travnicek, Z. Krivanek, and A. Sida, "Wireless tools for agriculture and forestry," presented at 1st Mobile Communications Summit, Barcelona, Spain, 2001. [3] L. Blazevic, "Scalable routing protocols with applications to mobility," in Système de communication. Lausanne: Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale, 2001, pp. 197.