Benchmark of Satellites Image Services for Precision Agricultural use

Over the last years, the attention of satellites images providers on precision agriculture has increased, leading to an enhancement of features resolution. At present, several satellites images services exist, which provide very different products for different demands. Specifically, constellations of nanosatellites are now able to produce daily images all over the world with a spatial resolution as low as 3 m in the case of Planet Scope. Besides, Sentinel-2 constellation is now completely positioned, and it provides data free of charge with a revisit time of 5 days and spatial resolution of 10 m. The present work is aimed at comparing spatial, temporal, spectral and radiometric resolution taking into account the farmer's requirements to benchmark the major satellites images providers. Concurrently, the study analyses the computational power needs per unit of area, for each single downloadable product. Finally, the costs of single images related to the minimum purchased areas are considered. The integration of satellite services with digital agriculture technologies could be profitable for both small and large farms. Small farmers require low-cost services, but with enough resolution to manage modest plots of land. On the other hands, big farmers, despite the possibility they have to make significant investments, can use low-resolution images, due to the relevant dimensions of the fields; additionally, big farms are more frequently equipped with variable rate technologies, and they can more easily take advantage of variability detection by satellites images.