Design of a low-cost passive acoustic monitoring system for animal localisation from calls

Abstract

The field of bioacoustics is concerned with monitoring wild animals based on their vocalisations. Passive acoustic recorders are now commonly used to collect data of the soundscapes of our wild places. While the data they collect is extremely useful, the majority of the recorders use a single omnidirectional microphone, and thus cannot independently perform localisation of a calling animal. Localisation can be useful to differentiate between multiple calling animals, to improve statistical estimates of abundance, and to locate calling posts, which may be close to nests. In this paper, we consider the design of a low-cost, practical, passive directional acoustic recorder that will facilitate animal localisation, and present and evaluate a prototype system for this purpose.