CATTLE MONITORING USING WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS 1 Cattle Monitoring Using Wireless Sensor Networks Pieter De Cremer and Gilles Vandewiele Coach: Prof. dr. ir. Jeroen Hoebeke and ir. Floris Van den Abeele University of Ghent, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Research Project: Survey Paper Abstract—The number of animals on a cattle farm is con- tinuously increasing to cope with lower revenues and higher cost of investments. Employing wireless sensor networks could drastically reduce the number of man-hours spent in managing the animals, while providing more detailed insights in the animal’s well-being. In this paper, we start by introducing the topic and sketching a general scenario. We then evaluate the different parts of this scenario in more detail. When a WSN is used, some key decisions have to be made. There are numerous wireless communication technologies and data collection protocols, each having their own positive and negative impact on aspects of the network. Therefore, a comparison between the most common communication technologies and the most frequently used col- lection protocols is made. Afterwards, we evaluate how energy can be conserved in these wireless sensor networks, as power consumption has a big influence on the cost of the sensor network. Finally, the paper is concluded by presenting an overview of a number of existing solutions for cattle monitoring available today. Keywords—WSN, Cattle monitoring, Survey I. I NTRODUCTION Livestock producers today have a great need to monitor their cattle on a constant basis. There are a number of reasons why livestock monitoring is important in modern agriculture. Firstly, due to a lack of health control, diseases can infect many animals before getting detected. For example, the mad cow disease in 1986 and foot-and-mouth disease in 2001 in the U.K. led to the extermination of millions of animals and costed the economy 13 billion pounds [1]–[4]. Secondly, studying the behaviour of cattle can aid in managing the animal and its environmental impact [5]–[7]. For instance, grass growth could be analyzed to move the cattle towards greener pastures [6]. Finally, when animals do not have appropriate shelter this will cause them thermal stress [8]. In order to avoid this stress and keep the animals’ productivity as high as possible, the temperature of the environment needs to be monitored. On top of this, farms are increasingly expanding to cope with constantly decreasing profit margins [9]. Thus, livestock producers do not have time to monitor all their animals thoroughly and often don’t have sufficient knowledge to detect diseases early on [10]. Networks with sensors that monitor a number of parameters and send this data to a database for further processing could provide a solution on delivering detailed information to the farmer. The costs of the components of these networks are continuously decreasing and technologic advancements are being made rapidly, making a WSN a popular candidate. In this paper we will discuss the use of wireless sensor net- works for cattle monitoring, which could drastically reduce the Figure 1. Schematic of the three steps in a sensor network for cattle monitoring: sensing, collecting/transmitting raw data and computation. number of man-hours spent observing cattle, while increasing the accuracy of detecting malady [10]. Three major roles can be distinguished in a cattle monitoring system: data collection, transmission and processing. First, the required data needs to be measured and collected. This is the task of sensor nodes that are distributed among the animals. Some common ways to equip the animals with sensor nodes are collars (equipped with antennae) around the neck, a leg or neck tag, an earpiece or an ingestible device. [1], [3], [11]– [13]. From this raw data, useful information has to be derived. Since sensor nodes have limited processing power due to cost, size and energy input constraints they can not be used to do any data processing. Analysis of the gathered data and requisite computations have to be done on more capable systems. On top of that the farmer wants to access the information from any Internet connected device at all times, which is not feasible with sensor nodes as they might be asleep or temporarily unreachable. For these reasons we make use of a remote database system running in the cloud to analyze the data and derive useful information to present to the farmer [3], [10], [12], [14]. Before we can process this data remotely, we need a mechanism to transmit the data. The mobility of the animals and the danger of attaching wires to them makes it impossible to use wired devices. Therefore, wireless communication is used. How this collection is done is defined by the data collection protocol. A schematic of a generic WSN cattle monitoring scenario can be seen in figure 1. As there are many wireless communication technologies, each having their advantages and disadvantages, this paper briefly summarizes and compares the most important ones that are available today (II-B). We will also take a closer look at sensor nodes (II-A) and the design of an antenna (II-C). We then discuss common data collection protocols (III) and how energy efficiency could be improved (IV). Finally, we will briefly examine some existing commercial products available on the market today (V).