A survey on the 5G network and its impact on agriculture: Challenges and opportunities

Over the next decade, the superfast 5G network will play a critical role in farming industries to improve the yields and quality of crops while using minimal labor. Smart and precision farming allows farmers to be more informed and productive. The advent of 5G will considerably change the nature of jobs in farming and agriculture. The internet of things (IoT)-based cloud computing service in the 5G network provides flexible and efficient solutions for smart farming. This will allow the automated operation of various unmanned agricultural machines for the plowing, planting, and management phases of crop farming and will ultimately achieve secure, reliable, environmentally friendly, and energy-efficient operations and enable unmanned farms. This paper provides a complete survey on 5G technology in the agricultural sector and discusses the need for and role of smart and precision farming; benefits of 5G; applications of 5G in precision farming such as real-time monitoring, virtual consultation and predictive maintenance, data analytics and cloud repositories; and future prospects.