For details, see [46].
6.3 The ZebraNet Wildlife Tracker
Objective
The ZebraNet architecture [25] was developed with the objective of gathering
data on a range of species of terrestrial animals, in order to understand their
interactions and influence on one another. The goal was also to understand
the migration patterns of such wild animals, and how they may be a?®ected by
changes in the weather patterns and other influences like human development
into wilderness. The architecture is currently being deployed to study the
behavior of zebras, at the Sweetwaters Reserve in central Kenya.
Node Architecture
The ZebraNet system uses sensor nodes which are referred to as collars in the
ZebraNet literature since these nodes are placed around the animal??™s neck.
Due to the availability of solar energy, the nodes in the ZebraNet system can
26
be equipped with a solar array to power their batteries. A ZebraNet collar
consists of a miniature GPS receiver (GPS-MS1E from ?µBlox), an integrated
microprocessor (Hitachi-SH1, 20MHz), I/O support, and 1MB of flash RAM.
It is also equipped with two radios: (i) a short-range, Linx Technologies SC-PA
radio which o?®ers a range of 100 meters, with low power consumption, and (ii)
a long-range Tekk data radio which o?®ers up to 8 km in communication range,
though with a low data rate. A simple TDMA-like MAC protocol controlled by
the microprocessor, is used with the short-range radio.
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