Farmland Road Testing of the Long Range UHF Radio

The purpose of this exercise was to compare the range of the Emlid Reach RS3 LoRa radio and the Harxon UHF radio in relatively flat and unobstructed farmland roads. An Emlid Reach RS2+ was used as a Base for the RS3 rover.

Day 1: Recorded on 1/23/24: 34° F , 2 MPH SE Wind , 81% Humidity 

The external UHF radio was running on the lowest setting of 5 W vs LoRa Radio 0.1 W. The capability of the UHF radio can be boosted to 35 W.

The RS3 was mounted to the top of a car traveling at 25 mph while the age of corrections was monitored in MicroSurvey FieldGenius for Android, until the corrections were lost entirely. Once the receiver started operating autonomously, we backtracked until we could reacquire corrections and shoot a fixed shot. 

On Day 1, the Location of the Base had less than ideal elevation. Regardless of that hitch, we achieved an additional 21% of the distance with the UHF 450 Mhz band over the 902 Mhz LoRa band.  

Day 2: Recorded on 1/24/24: 45° F , 4 MPH S Wind , 94% Humidity 

Once again, the external UHF radio was running on the lowest setting of 5 W vs LoRa radio 0.1 W.

The location of the Base was adjusted to a higher elevation to test the affect on the range. However, the range was also affected by the change in environment due to weather: thick fog and heavier rain.  

These conditions cut the range of the UHF 450 Mhz band by 44% and it cut the range of the LoRa 902 Mhz band by 65%. The UHF range was still more than double that of LoRa.  

In this video, we tested the range of corrections to our Emlid Reach RS3 coming from our RS2+ base over 902 MHz LoRa versus the range we could achieve over 450 MHz Trimtalk™ using our External Long Range radio connected to an RS2 base. We used MicroSurvey FieldGenius for Android to monitor the age of corrections. The UHF radio was shown to have significant increased range in both tests compared to the RS3 LoRa.