Abstract
Within the Wirelessly Accessible Sensor Populations (WASP) project a research technology
prototype has been build of an advanced Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) enabling Smart
Dairy Farming. The current integrated WASP solution demonstrated in herd health control
test bed can be well used as a research tool for animal and human behaviour scientists to
enable data acquisition for periods up to several weeks to study behaviour and, in the end,
come up with better models and treatments. Within the WASP test bed for Smart Dairy
Farming, the focus has been on remote monitoring of activity-related problems like claw
health and locomotion. Encouraged by the large-scale herd control deployment whose
operation is limited to 10 to 12 days, we performed an exercise to assess whether it seems
feasible to monitor a large number of cows over a period of a year without replacing the 8Ah
batteries. Through this exercise, we wanted to get a feeling on application and deployment
trade-offs like 1) acceptable time between packets generated at application level, 2) acceptable
number of battery-powered mobile sensor nodes, 3) required number and positioning of
battery- and/or mains-powered forwarder nodes and 4) required number and positioning of
sink nodes, while considering application Quality of Service constraints in terms of size (and
hence energy capacity) of batteries, packet delivery ratio and packet delivery latency.
Keywords: wireless sensor network, test bed, herd control, locomotion, application
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Precision Livestock Farming (Prague, Czech Republic, July 11-14, 2011) |
| Place of Publication | Prague |
| Publisher | Czech Centre for Science and Society |
| Pages | 17-26 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9788090483019 |
| Publication status | Published - 2011 |
