UN Department of Economics and Social Affairs predicted that the world population will increase by 2 billion in 2050 with over 50% from the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Considering the level of poverty and food insecurity in the region, there is an urgent need for a sustainable increase in agricultural produce. However, farming approach in the region is primarily traditional. Traditional farming is characterized by high labor costs, low production, and under/oversupply of farm inputs. All these factors make farming unappealing to many. The use of digital technologies such as broadband, Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud computing, and Big Data Analytics promise improved returns on agricultural investments and could make farming appealing even to the youth. However, initial cost of smart farming could be high. Therefore, development of a dedicated IoT cloud-based platform is imperative. Then farmers could subscribe and have their farms managed on the platform. It should be noted that majority of farmers in SSA are smallholders who are poor, uneducated, and live in rural areas but produce about 80% of the food. They majorly use 2G phones, which are not internet enabled. These peculiarities must be factored into the design of any functional IoT platform that would serve this group. This paper presents the development of such a platform, which was tested with smart irrigation of maize crops in a testbed. Besides the convenience provided by the smart system, it recorded irrigation water saving of over 36% compared to the control method which demonstrates how irrigation is done traditionally.

The development of wireless technology has facilitated the wide deployment of mobile communication systems. The beauty of wireless communication is that all nooks and corners can be reached at a cheaper and faster rate when compared with wireline. Wireless is now dominating the telecommunications market. Initially, the dawn of wireless was seen as the dawn of communications to poor countries and rural areas which were poorly covered by wireline devices due to high cost. Currently, the story has changed. Both the wired and unwired environments are clamoring for wireless connectivity. Considering the hype of R&D in broadband technologies and easy acceptance in the market place, wireline communications may soon die a natural death. However, wireless communications faces a few challenges. One of them is that the radio frequency (RF) carrier signals used in these communication systems degrades as it travels through the air interface due to attenuation and interference. As a result, the range of coverage may not be as planned leading to very weak reception or even dead zones where no communication can be done. This problem has resulted in the development of cellular signal boosters that help in receiving the weak signal, amplifying and then re-transmitting it to reach the uncovered areas. Boosters are now giving hope to the frustrated wireless users such as indoor users and those at the fringes of a cell site. These boosters are diverse in make, range, method of operation, deployment and cost. In this paper, a survey of various signal booster designs, deployment and performance is presented. It is hoped that this will serve as a one-stop shop for researchers and developers in the important field of wireless signal boosters and extenders, who wish to know what is available and existing challenges.

Solar cells, as an alternate means of electricity supply, is rapidly advancing. Generally, output of solar cells depends largely on intensity of sun and angle of incidence on the cells. This means that to get maximum efficiency from these cells, they must remain directly pointed at the sun from sun rise to sun set. However, the position of sun’s highest intensity with respect to a given spot changes with time of the day. It is therefore necessary to automatically control position of solar cells to always align with the highest intensity of sun. In this paper, we present a prototype automatic solar panel controller, with night time hibernation. The proposed system consists of both software and hardware parts, and it automatically provides best alignment of solar panel with sun to get maximum intensity. The solar panel controller system detects the presence of sun rays using light dependent resistors (LDR). At the heart of the control mechanism is an AT89C52 microcontroller. It is programmed to constantly monitor the output of an LDR, actuate a stepper motor to reposition the solar panel to a direction with the highest intensity. The proposed system also has an option of manual control of the panel via a computer interface or a keypad unit for easy of user interactivity during maintenance. Testing the proposed system, results shows that it can successfully track the sun and enter idle mode in the absence of sun rays, hence, conserving over 50% of energy required to operate the system.