Wearable Wireless Biosensor Technology for Monitoring Cattle: A Review

Abstract

Simple SummaryThe wearable wireless sensor system plays a crucial role in providing behavioral and physiological data for each individual in precision livestock farming. This article reviewed the most types of sensor systems available in the market and summarized detailed information on these systems. Additionally, through meta-analysis, the accuracy of the parameters generated by the sensor system was verified. As a result, it has been shown that there are more than 60 sensor systems of various types have been developed and sold. Most of them generate behavioral and physiological parameters of cattle with excellent performance (e.g., eating time, ruminating time, lying time, standing time, etc.), with the exception of a few parameters (e.g., drinking time and walking time). In this review, it was also investigated that the same parameters predicted by sensor systems of the same brand showed different accuracies, but it was not possible to confirm where this difference originated because the additional experimental conditions presented in the literature were not detailed. Therefore, this review suggested that guidelines for evaluation criteria for research evaluating sensor performance are needed.The review aimed to collect information about the wearable wireless sensor system (WWSS) for cattle and to conduct a systematic literature review on the accuracy of predicting the physiological parameters of these systems. The WWSS was categorized as an ear tag, halter, neck collar, rumen bolus, leg tag, tail-mounted, and vaginal mounted types. Information was collected from a web-based search on Google, then manually curated. We found about 60 WWSSs available in the market; most sensors included an accelerometer. The literature evaluating the WWSS performance was collected through a keyword search in Scopus. Among the 1875 articles identified, 46 documents that met our criteria were selected for further meta-analysis. Meta-analysis was conducted on the performance values (e.g., correlation, sensitivity, and specificity) for physiological parameters (e.g., feeding, activity, and rumen conditions). The WWSS showed high performance in most parameters, although some parameters (e.g., drinking time) need to be improved, and considerable heterogeneity of performance levels was observed under various conditions (average I2 = 76%). Nevertheless, some of the literature provided insufficient information on evaluation criteria, including experimental conditions and gold standards, to confirm the reliability of the reported performance. Therefore, guidelines for the evaluation criteria for studies evaluating WWSS performance should be drawn up.