Wireless sensor networks in agriculture: cattle monitoring for farming industries

This paper investigates an adaptation of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) to cattle monitoring application. The proposed solution facilitates a desired requirement of continuously assessing the condition of individual animal, aggregating and reporting these data to the farm manager. There are several existing approaches to animal monitoring, from using a store and forward mechanisms to employing a GSM technique. These approaches for monitoring livestock health can only provide sporadic information and introduce a considerable cost in staffing and physical hardware. The core of this study is to overcome the aforementioned draw-backs by using alternative low cost, low power consumption sensor nodes, which are capable of providing real-time communications at a reasonable hardware cost. In this paper, the hardware and software have been carefully designed to provide early indication of possible outbreaks while conforming to WSNs' stringent limitations.