Geolocation and monitoring platform for extensive farming in mountain pastures Alvaro Llaria 1 , Guillaume Terrasson 1 , Harbil Arregui 2 , Amélie Hacala 1 1 ESTIA, Technopole Izarbel, 64210 Bidart, France {a.llaria, g.terrasson, a.hacala}@estia.fr 2 Vicomtech, Mikeletegi Pasealekua, 57, 20009 Donostia, Spain harregui@vicomtech.org Abstract—Nowadays, interconnected ubiquitous objects are more and more present in different applications as a technical solution to collect, every time and everywhere, great amounts of data which are accessible through the Internet. One interesting area of application is the monitoring of cattle, in order not only to improve the farming working conditions but also to better know the behavior of the animals. In this work, a geolocation and monitoring platform oriented to extensive farming in mountain environments is presented. The proposed solution is composed of low power long range communication geolocation devices and a dedicated interface, accessible by means of different portable devices, which allows users to access and study the collected data. Keywords—ubiquitous computing; geolocation; wireless communication; low energy consumption; extensive farming I. INTRODUCTION The Internet of Things (IoT) has experimented an important expansion during the last years mainly due to the evolution and miniaturization of electronic devices and to the improvement of wireless communication networks. The interest of IoT is its capacity to collect, using interconnected ubiquitous objects, environmental data which could be processed and analyzed by final users through different platforms such as computers, smart phones, etc. Then, nowadays, IoT applications cover a wide range of areas such as medical, manufacturing, home automation, scientific studies or sport activities. In this context, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) combined with radio transceivers embedded into collars have been employed since a number of years by ecologists and scientists. These technologies are used in order to track animals in the field and to monitor their behavior from the analysis of data issued from their movements [1, 2]. Furthermore, in the frame of extensive farming, the capability of these technologies in order to propose and implement virtual fencing solutions has also been studied [3, 4]. Nowadays, several solutions are already in the market mainly to track savage animals in open spaces like birds [5] or roe deer [6]. Nevertheless, the application of these technologies to monitor and eventually control the cattle seems to be in a research stage, because of a number of constraints [7], mainly in terms of energetic autonomy of embedded systems, wireless network coverage and communication network architecture. The work presented in this paper proposes a geolocation platform for extensive farming which offers long autonomy and wide coverage by means of a specific wireless communication network. The information issued from the exploitation of the data collected using the proposed system confirms the utility of new technologies to offer novel services that improve the farming working conditions. In this frame, this article shows that this type of platform is able to answer different societal and technical challenges concerning the extensive farming in mountain environment. The paper is structured as follows. Section II shows the main challenges to face up in the frame of farming and technologies applied to extensive breeding. The technical aspects of the proposed solution are described in depth in Section III. In Section IV, the main results obtained during the tests in open air are analyzed and discussed. Finally, Section V concludes this paper, including a description of the future work for the improvement of the developed platform. II. STATE OF THE ART AND CHALLENGES A. Farming challenges From several years, different approaches have been proposed in order to enhance the livestock production [8], either from the bioengineering area (“in vitro meat” or genetic modifications in example) or based on Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs). The wide penetration of new ICTs in many societal areas is an interesting opportunity to improve the farming conditions in rural areas, proposing solutions relatively non-intrusive for the animal and less controversial than those issued from the biological engineering. This is the aim of the Precision Livestock Farming [9], based on the application of the electronics and communication technologies as a solution to optimize the farming production. Then, the IoT must give the definitive impulsion to generalize the application of new technologies in the agriculture. From the point of view of the final user, there are several aspects to be taken into account which can motivate a farmer to adopt those new technologies [10]: to have a positive vision of new technologies, the perception of the easiness to use those technologies, the perception of the real utility of the proposed innovation, and to have the impression that the proposed technology accomplish the objectives of the farmer. In this context, a technology will be adequate if it helps the farmer to accomplish his daily tasks, respecting at the same time his liberty to decide the way and the moment to carry out those tasks. 978-1-4799-7799-4/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE 2420