Effects of GNSS Performance Deterioration on Precision Agriculture

Precision agriculture is a new discipline aimed to provide a framework for optimal crops yield soil management. Satellite navigation plays an essential role in precision agriculture, providing the most accurate position estimate for various sensors deployed in order to survey both the soil characteristics and the crops yield. Since the sensor readings serve as an input to the advanced agricultural geostatitstics algorithms, the quality of positioning estimation is essential for optimal planning of soil treatment activities. Here we demonstrate the importance of high- quality position estmation for precision agriculture based on a real case-study, and present an assessment of potential drawbacks in soil treatment planning, caused by GNSS performance deterioration. This paper concludes with an outline of mitigation techniques and proposals for further development.