Last Wednesday marked a monumental milestone for the 5G Open Innovation Lab’s Food Resiliency Project. For the first time, a drone was deployed on a Private Mobile Network (PMN) at Swans Trail Orchard – the site of the Ag Field Lab. This trial tested the Swans Trail PMN’s ability to perform an end-to-end flow-through of a real-time “Smart Farm ” use case – ultimately resulting in valuable insights gathered and delivered to the farmer.

The drone was used to capture images of the orchard, which were then transferred to a Microsoft Imaging application deployed at the edge on Dell and VMware hardware. The Swan Trail PMN, powered by Expeto, then sent compressed images to the Azure Cloud by way of T-Mobile’s public network. At that point, Microsoft FarmBeats processed the image data before sending it via Innov8.ag app to deliver real-time insights of the orchard directly to the farmer. And throughout the entire process, the Amdocs OSS NEO platform ensured service, network and application deployment across the network functions.

The Swans Trail PMN, powered by Expeto’s enterprise-first NeXtworking platform, proved up to the task, enabling the orchestration of applications and devices to complete their mission critical tasks and operations. As such, the resulting success of the drone deployment presents a compelling use case for PMNs deployed in a “Smart Farm” setting.

As farms continue to embrace innovative technologies and undergo their Industry 4.0 journeys, there is a need for a PMN that can support a large volume of smart meters, sensors, devices and applications across an expansive area. This trial conducted by the impressive ecosystem of 5G Open Innovation Lab partners positioned Expeto’s NeXtworking platform to be a valuable and proven option for Private Mobile Networking in the Agritech sphere.

For more information on Expeto’s solution for Agriculture, click here.