GPS-less animal tracking system

mobile target tracking in sensor network field is an important area of wireless sensor network (WSN) application. The speed of target and constraints on WSN nodes vary from one application to another. In this paper, we report our work on application of WSN to track movements of small turtles in Wildlife Institute of India (WII) campus. This would allow wildlife researchers to understand behaviour of these turtles. These turtles are very small in size and Global Positioning System (GPS) based monitoring is not very useful. So we have developed a GPS-less system to track movement of these turtles. In addition, we monitor the micro-climate around the animal as well as monitor period of hibernation during winter time. We have carried out trial of this system in our campus with a simulated mobile target carrying one node with a grid of four fixed sensor nodes. This system uses incremental grid based approach to localize moving target. The data obtained is passed on to a Web based data server through a gateway and movement is shown on a digital map using a browser based visualization software utilizing Google Map APIs (application programming interface).