The harmonic radar: a new method of tracing insects in the field

Abstract

1. A novel technique for tracing the movements of insects in the field is described.2. The detection system is based on radar technology originally developed for locating avalanche victims. The key of the system is a tiny electronic diode that, glued to the insect, can reflect microwave beams emitted by portable detection equipment.3 . The technique has been successfully tested in a field-tracing experiment with carabid beetles. The results show that these insects are capable of dispersing surprisingly long distances in a relatively short period of time.

Boreal carabid beetles (Coleoptera, Carabidae) in managed spruce forests – a summary of Finnish case studies

“…Within a heavily fragmented landscape, species dispersal abilities and the distance between their utilized habitat patches are critical for the maintenance of populations (den Boer 1990a, b, Fahrig and Merriam 1994, Hanski 1999. Flightless carabids may move up to a few hundred metres by foot (Mascanzoni and Wallin 1986), but these movements are probably seldom target-oriented at the scale of tens of metres (Wallin 1986). The continuous availability and connectivity of mature stands should thus be guaranteed, and the distance between these stands should not exceed 50-200 metres.…”

Tracking Insects with Harmonic Radar: a Case Study

“…In general, the tags used with the RECCO system are longer and heavier (Table 1) than those used by Riley and Smith (2002). The detection distances for tags held above the ground range from 30 to 50 m and are even shorter (<10 m) when the tag is on the ground (Mascanzoni and Wallin 1986). …”

Detection and accurate localization of harmonic chipless tags

“…The electromagnetic characterization of antennas with nonlinear loads was initially carried out in [32]. Most of the studies are application oriented and present experimental results [10,[20][21][22][23][24]33]. Unfortunately, no studies analyzing the fundamental detection capability and achievable localization accuracy using harmonic tags are available, at author's knowledge.…”

“…Harmonic tags have been introduced some years ago and have been applied to specific applications such as avalanche rescue systems [12], healthcare [13][14][15], sensing [16][17][18][19], and animal tracking [20][21][22][23][24]. A similar approach has been exploited in harmonic radar systems [25][26][27], in 1-bit frequency doubling tags [1], and for energy harvesting [28].…”