title: Wireless Sensor Network deployment for monitoring wildlife passages.
abstract: Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are being deployed in very diverse application scenarios, including rural and forest environments. In these particular contexts, specimen protection and conservation is a challenge, especially in natural reserves, dangerous locations or hot spots of these reserves (i.e., roads, railways, and other civil infrastructures). This paper proposes and studies a WSN based system for generic target (animal) tracking in the surrounding area of wildlife passages built to establish safe ways for animals to cross transportation infrastructures. In addition, it allows target identification through the use of video sensors connected to strategically deployed nodes. This deployment is designed on the basis of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, but it increases the lifetime of the nodes through an appropriate scheduling. The system has been evaluated for the particular scenario of wildlife monitoring in passages across roads. For this purpose, different schemes have been simulated in order to find the most appropriate network operational parameters. Moreover, a novel prototype, provided with motion detector sensors, has also been developed and its design feasibility demonstrated. Original software modules providing new functionalities have been implemented and included in this prototype. Finally, main performance evaluation results of the whole system are presented and discussed in depth.
authors.affiliation: Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Technical University of Cartagena, Campus Muralla del Mar, E-30202, Cartagena, Spain. antoniojavier.garcia@upct.es
authors.forename: Antonio-Javier
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Garcia-Sanchez
authors.forename: Felipe
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Garcia-Sanchez
authors.forename: Fernando
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Losilla
authors.forename: Pawel
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kulakowski
authors.forename: Joan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Garcia-Haro
authors.forename: Alejandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rodríguez
authors.forename: José-Vicente
authors.initials: JV
authors.lastname: López-Bao
authors.forename: Francisco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Palomares
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000835:Animals, Wild; D003195:Computer Communication Networks / Q000295:instrumentation*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004867:Equipment Design; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D008124:Locomotion; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012984:Software; D059015:Wireless Technology / Q000295:instrumentation*