One of those new application areas is Integrated Pest Management (IPM). Population dynamics forecasting models could provide great added value to combat pests in a sustainable way by proactively controlling them before they become a problem at specific locations. This requires precise and near real-time meteorological data, which sensor networks can provide.

Although sensor networks are already widely used in many techno-environmental settings, and this number will only continue to increase with the rise of IoT, most existing WNS systems still rely on the availability of a power grid and WiFi or a cellular communication network, which are widely available in and around populated areas. Pest management, on the other hand, requires surveillance in remote areas where a local network and power supply are not present. Satellite communication (SATCOM) could provide a solution to the current limitations insuring no data loss and a continual stream that feeds into the pest population dynamics and disease models

The horticulture segment is mainly interested in:

• frost protection systems
• the monitoring of fruit growth throughout the season
• pest management

Early frost causes huge crop losses in Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. These markets currently already invest much more in frost protection but need a system that will alert them before frost events so that the orchards can be protected against the frost.
A second type of horticultural users are Mediterranean olive owners. These olive growers are mainly interested in the control of Bactrocera olea or ‘olive fruit fly’. This olive fruit fly causes huge losses to their crop. Currently they use a set of pheromone traps to monitor the adult population in order to schedule treatment, however, when these adults are caught the population is already quite high. Being able to forecast the population earlier in the process will prevent crop loss and optimise not only the treatment schedule but may also identify the optimal harvesting time, finding a trade-off between the fruit ripeness and quality whilst prevent fruit infestation.

The IPM sector is mainly interested in:

• integrated pest management solutions
• pest population dynamics
• disease risk

The IPM sector can be divided into two main groups:

Mosquito IPM in tropical, high-end luxury game reserves in RSA

Urban pest control in Europe

While sensor networks are widely used in many urban and sub-urban setting, fully independent system deployed in remote areas that provide near real-time (NRT), 24/7, cost efficient environmental monitoring constitute a demand present in the market segments represented by the SENZITALL customers.

SATCOM: will be used as a second communication link ensuring reliable, uninterrupted data transfer and redundancy for the SENZITALL application. The SATCOM component is a crucial part of the system which will provide safe, cost-effective and secure communication even in areas where existing connections are overloaded, destroyed or not present. SATCOM will provide trustable transfer of payload environmental data to the remote server in NRT regardless of the spatial position of the WNS.

GNSS: will allow for flexible node positioning with the desired accuracy levels. GNSS is necessary for providing geo-referenced metadata which will be coupled with the WNS sensor and EO data at different levels.

Earth Obesrvation (EO): compliments the data collected by the WNS. It can help us determine climatic zones in a region, aid sampling design, provide additional data which the WNS can’t collect and provide initial data for spatial position of WNS nodes.