Application of wireless sensor networks based on cognitive radio for animal welfare

Abstract

The task of matching mother reindeer to their calves in order to identify the ownership of the calves is currently performed using manual techniques which are stressful on the animals and herders alike. A technique based on cognitive wireless sensor networks (WSN) is presented in this work. Amongst the considered WSN scenarios is cognitive radio, where a radio wave transmitter or receiver such as a wireless node can sense the vacant bands in the radio spectrum and accordingly change its transmission and reception characteristics to make advantage of those vacancies in order to improve its communication capabilities without interfering with other users of the radio spectrum. In this way, the cognitive radio helps to improve the utilization of scarce radio spectrum. In this work, Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) technology was given greater interest as it is widely used in animal identification. A method based on Wi-Fi enabled active RFID tags is proposed.