Automated Wildlife Radio Tracking

Abstract

Radio direction-finding techniques have been widely employed by the wildlife track- ing community because they offer powerful, flexible tools for monitoring animal movements and behavior. Reductions in the size and power consumption of GPS chipsets have recently allowed GPS location-finding techniques to also be applied to wildlife monitoring. Despite their successes, these approaches still have signifi- cant shortcomings, primarily due to the energy constraints imposed by the allowable mass of the electrochemical battery that can be carried by the animal. This require- ment causes tag lifetimes to be shorter than desired. Attaching a tracking collar is a risky procedure for all participants, and maximizing the tag service intervals is extremely important. This is true even for large animals, which can carry significant tag mass without behavior disruptions. Therefore, disturbances to the animal (which are primarily driven by tag energy consumption), followed closely by cost are the primary design requirements. These requirements motivate a new tracking system, based on time-of-arrival (TOA) measurements. This system is similar in many respects to GPS; the primary difference is that in this system the mobile asset to be tracked emits, rather than receives, signals. Although transmitting a radiofrequency signal is often the most power-intensive operation for a tag, this choice yields a system with average tag energy requirements that are lower than any current radio-tracking method. Though this chapter focuses on the application of this technology to monitor- ing animal movements, the same set of design criteria apply to generic asset tracking, and we believe that there is a universal need for a local terrestrial tracking system that offers precise positioning with tiny, cheap, long-lived tracking tags.

BibTeX

@article{maccurdy2018automated,
  year = {2018},
  title = {Automated Wildlife Radio Tracking},
  author = {MacCurdy, Robert B and Bijleveld, Allert I and Gabrielson, Richard M and Cortopassi, Kathryn A},
  journal = {Handbook of Position Location: Theory, Practice, and Advances, Second Edition},
  pages = {1219--1261},
  publisher = {Wiley Online Library},
}