Internet of Things (IoT) on Wildlife Health Monitoring

Shubham1 and Hunkee Cho2

1 Graduate Student, Specializing in Robotics and MEMS/NEMS Systems. Department of Electrical & Computer

Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA 2 Senior MEMS Process Integration Engineer in Calient

Technologies, Inc. MS of Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, USA

Abstract

Wildlife health and condition monitoring is an important aspect and this paper deals with the nano-

scale based studies with attachment of very few nodes on to the body of wild animals. This application

focusses on a wireless nano sensor network which can be employed for this purpose. The problem faced

was the macro size of the mote consisting of sensors on the body of wild animals which caused

uncomfortableness. Also, the mechanism would be on risk of damage when the wild animals try to free

themselves from it consequently affecting the cost. The power consumption is also high due to the size

of the sensors and asks for frequent battery replacement. Finding the whereabouts of the animals and

catching them for monitoring involves wasting a huge amount of time and work force. The problems can

be sorted out by developing a network based on Wireless Nano Sensors.

Introduction

The technique involving nano sensors which can obviously eliminate the problem for power

consumption and can help in monitoring for a longer period of time. The size issue of the sensors can

also be solved so that wild animals can feel comfortable when it will be attached to their body. The

wireless nano sensor nodes attached to their body can send data to the sink node device from where it

can be communicated to the server. The data can then be processed and analyzed. So, basically the

setup requires formation of local clusters which will contain nodes of same cluster ID and the adjacent

clusters can communicate with each other. Each node can communicate with the cluster head by

sending packet and acknowledgement of the received packet. Sensors are deployed in the large region

randomly and an additional sensor which will be at the approximate center can be called as seed node

which can cover the whole range of sensors.

The Nano Sensor Techniques and Details

It will be composed of MEMS/optical nano sensors, analog to digital interface, high battery backup and

low power consumption, an embedded processor for interpreting sensor data and controlling the

network, and transceiver/antenna to share and receive the nano sensor information. The below figure

shows the optical images obtained with arrays of electrodes with e-beam oriented electrolyte channel. It

is basically the formation of sink node. The potential of the cathode increase gradually at the potential

level of led (Pd) wire which grows from cathode to anode. The electro- deposition of led is performed

here at very low applied current in nA. The growth of wire can be around 7 um. The electrical resistance

also decreases as the led wire reduces the gap between cathode and anode. The lithographic process

can be then applied to create a patterned nano-structure of materials like silicon. This technique

uniquely highlights the potential for this nano sensing process through nano-electronics, sensing and

electromechanical systems.

Figure 1. The solid structure of Nano Sensor

The process then followed by the sink node cluster leader is establishing the path with the non-sink

node leaders so that packets containing information can be shared and broadcasted. Initially the hop

counter is set to zero to the packet to be transferred. On receiving the packet, each node increments the

hop counter by one and compares it to its own counter. If it is larger than hop counter in the packet, it

has found a shorter path to sink node. If then updates its counter and sets the next hop pointer to the

neighbor from which the packet as sent. This completes the setup with every node in the network has

path gradients towards sink node.

Figure 2. Deployment of Protocol

A flexible and tattoo style sensor structure

This sensor below was developed for a premature baby’s brain waves but it will be able to apply to this

field due to flexible and integrated characteristics. Animals never indicate this kind of sensor and it

would be useful to collect information from animals’ skin. It picks up electric signals in the skin and

transmits them wirelessly to devices. This sensor has a wireless antenna for data transmission, a wireless

power coil onto the device, LED and light sensing devices to collect a variety of electrical signals on the

surface of animals like blood oxygenation, temperature, mechanical strains of skin.

Figure 3. Flexible and wearable Nano Sensor

Implementation of Data Mining into Wildlife Monitoring

The sensor device placed on the body of the animal send the data of their physical characteristics to the

Forest server from where the data can be taken for further mining. The data mining technique will help

to find out the relationship among the parameters of activities of wild animals during different situations

like hunting, sleeping, wounded etc. For an example, the frequency of hunting can be detected by the

data obtained from body temperature. The wounds on the leg can be identified by the walking speed

data taken through inertia sensor attached to the legs.

Conclusions & Further Research

The detection systems asks for more flexibility in variety of wireless networks and devices that can be

easily adapted. Also as a part of further research we can have sensors which can even carry drugs that

can instantly be injected to the animals in case the wild animals are suffering from heavy pain, high or

low blood pressure issue, high body temperature etc. and forest officials are located at far distance to

reach immediately at the site. But that asks for more complex mechanism for data mining and

implanting more bulky sensors on the body of animals. Immediate curing action has to be triggered by

the operator to make the drug delivering sensor work instantly. So it creates a kind of dependence on

the operator. However, possibilities of making this success can’t be denied irrelevant of the complexity

involved seeing the nano sensors service in the IoT. In addition, sensors that can harvest a power from a

bio energy or power scavenging from vibration by animal movement would minimize the power loss of

sensors.

References

[1] Bartosz Wietrzyk, Milena Radenkovic, "Realistic Large Scale ad hoc Animal Monitoring", School of

Computer Science, University of Nottingham.

[2] Shah Sheetal, "Autonomic Wireless Sensor Networks", Viterbi School of Engineering, University of

Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

[3] Dr Milena Radenkovic and Prof.Chris Greenhalgh, "Application of Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks to

Monitoring of Farm Animals", Technical Overview.

[4] http://howellfoundation.blogspot.com/2015/01/on-science-and-tattoos-one-that-you.html

[5] http://www.slideshare.net/VRyzhonkov/body-sensor-networks-challenges-applications-37117319