6G-Enabled Smart Agriculture: A Review and Prospect

Abstract

As human society develops, the population is growing explosively and water and land resources are gradually being exhausted due to pollution. Smart agriculture is regarded as having an essential role in addressing the above challenges. Smart agriculture can significantly improve the agro-ecological environment and the yield and quality of agricultural products, and it can reduce the usage of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, thus alleviating the pollution of farmland and improving the sustainability of agricultural activities. The key to smart agriculture is in utilizing information and communication technologies to make agricultural cultivation and production automatic and intelligent. Specifically, wireless communications play an active role in the development of agriculture, and every generation of wireless communication technology drives agriculture to a more intelligent stage. In this article, we first review the wireless technologies which have mature applications in agriculture. Moreover, it is of importance to exploit the up-to-date communication technologies to further promote agricultural development. Therefore, we have surveyed the key technologies in sixth-generation mobile communication systems, as well as their existing and potential applications in smart agriculture.