Abstract
The design of wireless sensor nodes for animal tracking is a multidisciplinary activity that presents several research challenges both from a technical and a biological point of view. A monitoring device has to be designed accounting for all system requirements including the specific characteristics of animals and environment. In this work we present some aspects of the design of a wireless sensor node to track and monitor the pink iguana of the Galápagos: a recently discovered species living in remote locations at the Galápagos Islands. The few individuals of this species live in a relatively small area that lacks of any available communication infrastructure. We present and discuss the energy harvesting architecture and the related energy management logic. We also discuss the impact of packaging on the sensor performance and the consequences of the limited available energy on the GPS tracking.
Highlights
Tracking devices are fundamental tools to study the behavior of wild animals in relation to their natural environment
In this work we present some design aspects of a device aimed at characterizing the long-term behaviour of Galápagos pink land iguanas (Conolophus marthae, hereafter pink iguanas): a recently discovered species of iguana [2] that is assessed as Critically Endangered
In this paper the design and the assessment of a Wireless Sensor Node designed for animal monitoring has been presented
Summary
Tracking devices are fundamental tools to study the behavior of wild animals in relation to their natural environment. The selection of suited technologies requires a tight collaboration between engineers and wildlife conservationists: for instance, the choice of a specific network technology may have strong implications on the size of the device, and power consumption which may have a reflection on the weight and size of the battery loaded on the animal The description of the tracking problem in an harsh environment with a specific reference to the Galápagos Pink Iguana; The energy harvesting and power architecture solution, that enables long distance communication by powering both an high current demanding RF booster and the energy demanding GPS module; The description of the device packaging and of the real deployment on the field; An analysis of power consumption, sensors calibration and GPS fixing performance. The paper is organized as follow: in Section 2 we briefly introduce the biological problem and the pink iguana habitat; Section 3 describes the selected hardware components, the energy harvesting and power architectures adopted and the enclosure and attachment solutions; Sections 4 and 5 report the sensors’ calibration and the energy consumption tests respectively; in Section 6 we report the related work comparing the device with those commercially available
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