Solar-powered sensor for continuous monitoring of livestock position

Author

Panckhurst, Bradley ; Brown, Phill ; Payne, Keith ; Molteno, T.C.A.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Phys., Univ. of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

fYear

2015

fDate

13-15 April 2015

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

6

Abstract

Advances in animal tracking technology allow for improvement in farm resource management, animal welfare and the possibility of an overall reduction in running costs. We describe a light-weight solar-powered position sensor tag for livestock and a corresponding base station. The livestock ear tag weighs less than 40g and utilises 868MHz SRD/ISM frequency band for telemetry. This provides configurable wireless connection for data retrieval triggered by a base station, reducing the overall power consumption of the tags. Data transmission range is 2.4km line of sight and 1km typical. Static testing of the position sensor yields a circular error probable of 6 ±2 metres.

Keywords

UHF detectors; electric sensing devices; farming; position measurement; power measurement; radiotelemetry; SRD-ISM frequency band; animal tracking technology; animal welfare; base station; configurable wireless connection; continuous monitoring; cost reduction; data retrieval; data transmission; distance 1 km; farm resource management; frequency 868 MHz; light-weight solar-powered position sensor tag; livestock ear tag; livestock position; static testing; telemetry; Agriculture; Animals; Base stations; Batteries; Ear; Global Positioning System; Telemetry;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Sensors Applications Symposium (SAS), 2015 IEEE

Conference_Location

Zadar

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/SAS.2015.7133590

Filename

7133590