Remote monitoring of animal behaviour in the environment can assist in managing both the animal and its environmental impact. GPS collars which record animal locations with high temporal frequency allow researchers to monitor both animal behaviour and interactions with the environment. These ground-based sensors can be combined with remotely-sensed satellite images to understand animal-landscape interactions. The key to combining these technologies is communication methods such as wireless sensor networks (WSNs). We explore this concept using a case-study from an extensive cattle enterprise in northern Australia and demonstrate the potential for combining GPS collars and satellite images in a WSN to monitor behavioural preferences and social behaviour of cattle.

This paper presents research that is being conducted by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) with the aim of investigating the use of wireless sensor networks for automated livestock monitoring and control. It is difficult to achieve practical and reliable cattle monitoring with current conventional technologies due to challenges such as large grazing areas of cattle, long time periods of data sampling, and constantly varying physical environments. Wireless sensor networks bring a new level of possibilities into this area with the potential for greatly increased spatial and temporal resolution of measurement data. CSIRO has created a wireless sensor platform for animal behaviour monitoring where we are able to observe and collect information of animals without significantly interfering with them. Based on such monitoring information, we can identify each animal's behaviour and activities successfully

This paper presents the design of the Fleck platform for building real-world outdoor sensor networks. Fleck1 and Fleck2 have been successfully deployed in several long-term outdoor sensor networks. The Fleck3 is the latest member of the platform. The power input stage of the Fleck3 has been simplified and now provides the ability to compute both the energy coming in and the energy being consumed. This makes possible the implementation of sophisticated distributed energy-aware applications. Both rechargeable batteries (with over-charge protection) and super-capacitors can be used as the primary source of power. The Fleck3 incorporates a real-time clock. At the expense of a small current drain, the real-time clock provides several advantages. It allows the Fleck3 to be placed into very deep sleep, reducing the overall energy consumption down to 30 micro-Amps. It also allows the network as a whole to maintain a better sense of time and reduces the time-keeping overhead on the micro-controller. The Fleck3 incorporates a packet-based radio from Nordic. This radio is more energy efficient than earlier generations and significantly reduces the communications overhead on the micro-controller. It also provides a better radio front-end, with a range of about 1 km with normal, zero-gain quarter-wavelength antennas in the 915 MHz band. The Fleck platform supports a large variety of sensor interface boards, including a companion board incorporating a TPM chip from Atmel for applications where security is important. These features make the Fleck platform a very strong candidate for outdoor sensor networks.

This paper investigates a mobile, wireless sensor/actuator network application for use in the cattle breeding industry. Our goal is to prevent fighting between bulls in on-farm breeding paddocks by autonomously applying appropriate stimuli when one bull approaches another bull. This is an important application because fighting between high-value animals such as bulls during breeding seasons causes significant financial loss to producers. Furthermore, there are significant challenges in this type of application because it requires dynamic animal state estimation, real-time actuation and efficient mobile wireless transmissions. We designed and implemented an animal state estimation algorithm based on a state-machine mechanism for each animal. Autonomous actuation is performed based on the estimated states of an animal relative to other animals. A simple, yet effective, wireless communication model has been proposed and implemented to achieve high delivery rates in mobile environments. We evaluated the performance of our design by both simulations and field experiments, which demonstrated the effectiveness of our autonomous animal control system.

A method for quantifying improvements in functional mobility is presented based on patient-worn accelerometer devices. For patients with cardiovascular, respiratory, or other chronic disease, increasing the amount of functional mobility is a large component of rehabilitation programs. We have conducted an observational trial on the use of accelerometers for quantifying mobility improvements in a small group of chronic disease patients (n=15, 48 - 86 yrs). Cognitive impairments precluded complex instrumentation of patients, and movement data was obtained from a single 2-axis accelerometer device worn at the hip. In our trial, movement data collected from accelerometer devices was classified into Lying vs Sitting/Standing vs Walking/Activity movements. This classification enabled the amount of walking to be quantified and graphically presented to clinicians and carers for feedback on exercise efficacy. Presenting long term trends in this data to patients also provides valuable feedback for self managed care and assisting with compliance

In this paper we describe the recent development of a low- bandwidth wireless camera sensor network. We propose a simple, yet effective, network architecture which allows multiple cameras to be connected to the network and synchronize their communication schedules. Image compression of greater than 90% is performed at each node running on a local DSP coprocessor, resulting in nodes using 1/8th the energy compared to streaming uncompressed images. We briefly introduce the Fleck wireless node and the DSP/camera sensor, and then outline the network architecture and compression algorithm. The system is able to stream color QVGA images over the network to a base station at up to 2 frames per second.