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.

Railways as Barriers for Wildlife: Current Knowledge

“…Modern technology allows the monitoring of pass usage thanks to cameras activated by infrared motion detectors at the pass entrance (Ford et al 2009;Mateus et al 2011). This method is constrained by the sensitiveness of the camera monitor sensor (Ford et al 2009), which is especially limiting in large passes and with small animals (Mateus et al 2011), because video cameras cover small areas and only animals close to the sensor are recorded (Ford et al 2009;García-Sánchez et al 2010;Mateus et al 2011). Thus, a logical next step to evaluate the use of wildlife passes has been the development of wireless sensor networks (García-Sánchez et al 2010).…”

“…This method is constrained by the sensitiveness of the camera monitor sensor (Ford et al 2009), which is especially limiting in large passes and with small animals (Mateus et al 2011), because video cameras cover small areas and only animals close to the sensor are recorded (Ford et al 2009;García-Sánchez et al 2010;Mateus et al 2011). Thus, a logical next step to evaluate the use of wildlife passes has been the development of wireless sensor networks (García-Sánchez et al 2010). These are low-cost devices that, by using a camera at the entrance of the pass and an infrared motion sensor network deployed in the surrounding area, enable the recording of reactions of animals approaching the wildlife pass and their eventual crossings (García-Sánchez et al 2010).…”

“…Thus, a logical next step to evaluate the use of wildlife passes has been the development of wireless sensor networks (García-Sánchez et al 2010). These are low-cost devices that, by using a camera at the entrance of the pass and an infrared motion sensor network deployed in the surrounding area, enable the recording of reactions of animals approaching the wildlife pass and their eventual crossings (García-Sánchez et al 2010). (4) Capture-mark-recapture (hereinafter "CMR").…”

Skyline-Based Aggregator Node Selection in Wireless Sensor Networks

“…Recently, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been used in many applications, such as military target tracking and surveillance [1], meteorological hazards [2], wildlife monitoring [3], natural disaster relief [4], and healthcare [5]. A WSN consists of a sink node, also called a base station, and a group of sensor nodes.…”

Detection and Countermeasure of Node Misbehaviour in Clustered Wireless Sensor Network

“…These networks are widely used in various applications like battlefield surveillance [2], environmental monitoring [3], wildlife monitoring [4], and so forth. In most of the applications the WSN is set up in a hostile environment in an ad hoc manner, which makes them vulnerable to several types of security threats [5].…”