From Circuits to Crops: A First-Principles Framework for Microwave Weed Control in Smallholder Farming

Abstract

The integration of electronics into agriculture has advanced sensing, control, and automation, but many technologies remain oriented toward large-scale commercial farming. This paper proposes a first-principles, system-level framework that integrates mature electronic technologies with locally available energy resources for smallholder farming. A weed-management case study compares conventional tractor-based herbicide application with a solar-powered autonomous unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) using targeted microwave treatment. The analytical model considers the principal energy requirements of both approaches and the energy-conversion stages of the proposed system, including photovoltaic generation, battery storage, power-electronic conversion, and microwave generation. Under the representative baseline assumptions, the proposed system requires approximately 224.6 MJ/ha of battery-side electrical energy, compared with approximately 215 MJ/ha for the conventional tractor-based herbicide scenarios considered. The principal distinction of the proposed architecture is therefore not lower operational energy under the baseline conditions, but the substitution of recurring fossil-fuel and chemical inputs with electrical energy that can be harvested locally from solar resources. The proposed framework therefore provides a quantitative basis for evaluating electronics-driven agricultural systems tailored to smallholder farming.