ABSTRACT

Mobile, wireless sensor networks are able to bring a new

level of monitoring into many industries. In this paper, we
describe how wireless technologies can be used to create a
platform for animal health and behaviour monitoring. A
steer is used as a case study, and is instrumented with both
internal and external sensors with a minimum amount of
interference with the animal. Using matchbox sized motes
placed inside standard drug release capsules, we have been
able to monitor the intra-rumenal activity of the steer. The
sensors communicate wirelessly with each other, and are
continuously connected over the mobile telephone
network to provide a real time view of the data, using
standard web services, from anywhere on the Internet.

KEY WORDS
Sensor network, wireless, GSM, GPRS.
1. Introduction
The need for individual and herd-wide monitoring of
livestock from a physical and physiological perspective
arises from the nature of the difficulties involved with
managing farms with large grazing areas. There has
always been a need for livestock producers to be able to
observe their animals as often as possible. Inattention to
the wellbeing of the animals, whether it be a health or
welfare issue can lead to reduced productivity and the
death of valuable stock. Management concerns such as
interactions between cows and bulls, or dams and their
offspring are also of great concern to farmers. In addition,
the farmer needs to always be aware of matters such as
water in dams or rivers, the amount, nature and nutritive
value of the pasture (i.e. the feed for the animals), the state
of fences and potential stock rustling. Although this calls
for complete farm-wide knowledge at all times, there is
much useful information in the animals themselves.
Unfortunately, it is often the case that the farmer has
neither the time or resources at hand to see the animals



regularly, and even when he does, he may not be in a
position to identify some of the more deep-rooted
problems associated with the metabolic or reproductive
state of the individuals. Unlike humans who can describe
their situation to a doctor, the animal is usually unable to
communicate symptoms to an observer.
The development of a platform technology being
described here-in, is integral to the future management of
livestock in the more remote areas of the world, but will
also find a place in intensive livestock enterprises such as
dairies and feedlots. The ability to be informed of changes
to the animals metabolic, behavioural or welfare status in
real time, together with input from fixed sensors such as
those describing food and water availability, will both
reduce the current reliance on manpower, and improve the
decision-making processes.
A problem specific to livestock monitoring (compared to
other forms of sensing currently used on farms or in
intensive situations) is that animals are mobile.
Communication links need to deal with mobility and be
able to cover long distances. In addition, intra-rumenal
sensors are subject to significant translation and rotation
within the animal resulting in antenna design, power, and
data interpretation issues.
To investigate these issues we have chosen to instrument a
steer using three MICA2 Berkeley Motes[1], a variety of
sensors, and an Ultralite GPRS unit[2]. By creating a
small wireless network, we are able to investigate the
internal workings of the animal without significantly
interfering with it. The purpose of this experiment was
two-fold, to test the capabilities of motes and wireless
sensor networks for animal health monitoring, as well as to
provide a preliminary investigation into movement in a
cows rumen. The rumen is considered to be the animals
engine-room, and is able to tell us much about the
animals health. One of the most important variables is
internal temperature, and in this experiment we chose to
measure temperature, a meaningful variable on the one
hand, but also as a proof of concept on the other. Other
health variables that are of interest to farmers and
veterinarians include pressure, pH level, conductivity and
other bio-measurements.
This experiment allows us to gain a broad understanding
of what is possible with current sensor network and mobile
Kevin Mayer
Faculty of Engineering & IT
Australian National University
Kevin.Mayer@anu.edu.au


Keith Ellis
Livestock Industries
CSIRO
Keith.Ellis@csiro.au
Ken Taylor
ICT Centre
CSIRO
Ken.Taylor@csiro.au




CATTLE HEALTH MONITORING USING WIRELESS SENSOR
NETWORKS



telephone technology, and what complications we may
encounter when dealing with live animals.
The next section briefly discusses other work in the area of
animal monitoring with a particular emphasis on remote
monitoring, and the use of wireless sensor networks. This
is followed by the body of the paper where we discuss the
experiments we conducted involving the instrumentation
of a steer with a wireless sensor network. We conclude
with a summary of our results and discussion of future
work.
2. Related Work
The most common methods of monitoring animal
behaviour over long periods of time are collaring a subset
of the animals with VHF beacons[3, 4], and visual
investigation by humans from fly-overs or drive-pasts.
The former method is severely limited due to not being
very accurate and only providing location and herding
information. The latter method is more comprehensive in
that various parameters on the animal can be monitored
and transmitted back to a base station. It is still very
limited in that very little sophistication can be built into
the collars or the network on a protocol level, and it
requires either many base-stations to cover a large area, or
regular drive throughs to collect the data. Analysis of
large areas of land using satellite techniques is another
common, yet expensive, monitoring method.
The goal of our work is to develop a low cost technology
that can be used to monitor a group of animals.
Zebranet[5] is an attempt to do this on a herd of Zebra at
the Mpala Research Centre in Kenya. Although concerned
with monitoring a large number of animals in a huge area,
Zebranet concentrates on the position and movement of
the animals rather than internal health statistics. It is this
feature in particular that we believe is most useful to
farmers, as opposed to animal behaviourists.
There is very little other research into novel platforms for
animal monitoring, in particular from a health perspective
that is beneficial to farmers.
3. Experiments
These experiments relied heavily on the remote
monitoring infrastructure[6, 7] developed at the CSIRO
ICT Centre in Canberra. The Ultralite[2], the remote
station, is a single-board computer consisting of an Atmel
128 processor, external EEPROM, and a Sony Ericsson
GM47 GSM module. The actual experiments took place at
CSIRO Livestock Industries McMaster Research
Laboratory in Chiswick, near Armidale, New South
Wales. The development of the system and its server and
database was based in Canberra.
Three experiments were conducted. Experiment 1
acquired some rumen temperature data, to test methods for
mounting instrumentation on the animal, transmitting data
and assessing its usefulness, Experiment 2 tested methods
of transmitting rumen data from inside cattle without a
cannula. Experiment 3 involved remote rumenal
monitoring using a technique applicable to cattle without a
cannula.
3.1. Experiment #1 - Internal Health Monitoring
In the long term, farmers need to be able to monitor the
health of their livestock in an autonomous fashion, without
significantly disturbing the animals. One of the goals of
this experiment was to remotely monitor the intra-rumenal
temperature of a steer over a long period of time and see
whether any particular patterns emerge. The experiment
was conducted on a steer fitted with a cannula that
provided access to his rumen. We configured an
Ultralite[2] with an attached temperature probe to monitor
the internal temperature and report it back to the database
in Canberra every 10 minutes, or whenever it changed by
0.2C
1
. This program was written on top of the base
mobile infrastructure libraries[8] on the Ultralite. The
hardware was encased in a small package attached to a
saddle on the animals rump, with the temperature probe
wire leading through the cannula into the rumen digesta.
The steers paddock was located on the outskirts of a
country town, and on the border of a GSM black spot, so
continuous coverage was not guaranteed, even with an
external antenna connected to the mobile phone module.
This led to frequent connections and disconnections from
the network and consequent intermittent data availability.
In future, buffering code will be introduced to prevent
such data loss. Despite this, much data was obtained,
giving an indication of the expected rumen functions such
as fermentation of feedstuffs and the mixing of ingested
water. As illustrated in Fig. 1, we witnessed a significant
drop in temperature as the animal drank from the water
trough. The local maximum shortly after the drop in
temperature is thought to be a result of movement within
the rumen mixing the colder water with the rest of the

1
Live information was presented by a web interface (and continues to
be) available at
http://mobile.act.cmis.csiro.au/database/template/cow.xml?xsl=cowpage.xsl
Fig. 1. Intra-rumenal temperature of a steer over a 5 hour
period.



rumens contents. We also noted that it takes upwards of 3
hours for the rumen to heat up to its equilibrium
temperature.
Although only a single variable, internal temperature is
considered to be valuable information as it can be used as
a basic health indicator and an aid in investigating:
When drinking occurs.
How much water is ingested at a particular drinking
event.
When the animal is ruminating, which acts as a proxy
to measure food intake.
What sort of mixing occurs in the rumen.
How much heat is generated during fermentation of
ingested feed.
How cold water affects the animal on a warm day, and
how warm water affects the animal on a cold day.
The optimum distribution of water within a paddock
to prevent overheating whilst still encouraging the
animal to graze throughout the paddock.
The effect different temperature and volumes of water
have on the living organisms inside the rumen (when
combined with measurements of micro-biota).
This experiment demonstrates the possibility of remote
health monitoring. It does not however provide a solution
for large scale deployment due to its configuration relying
on an animal with a cannula.
3.2. Experiment #2 Radio transmission through a cow
The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether
it would be feasible to use Berkeley Motes[1] as internal
sensing devices, wirelessly relaying data to the outside of
the animal.
Although the approximate radio range of the motes in free
air is known[1], it is difficult to model the radio behaviour
in a non-standard environment, such as the rumen of a
steer which contains a significant amount of water and
masticated and fermenting grass and micro-biota in the
digesta. The radio signal must also be able to penetrate the
animal tissue and leather between the rumen and an
external mote. An additional complexity is that the
orientation and location of the antenna on the mote inside
the rumen is unpredictable due to the churning activity of
the stomach.
This experiment was conducted in an ad-hoc manner using
qualitative analysis. Two motes were used to test the radio
signal; the mote to go inside the animal was programmed
with the TinyOS[9] demonstration application
CntToRfm. This application periodically broadcasts a
message containing a uniformly incrementing integer. The
second mote was programmed with the RfmToLeds
application which lights up the LEDs on the mote to
display a binary counter showing the value of the number
in the last radio message received. No modifications were
made to these programs, meaning the standard active
messaging[10] and default MAC level protocols were
used.
The CntToRfm mote was placed inside a standard plastic
barrel of a controlled release device[11] (CRD) shown in Fig. 2. The CRD pictured here with a MICA Mote partially
inserted is a standard type of capsule that is usually dosed
orally. It has built in wings which prevent it from being
regurgitated. We attached fishing line in order to retrieve the
capsule from the stomach after testing.
Table 1. Empirical results of MICA radio transmission through a steer.
Type of
Mote Used
Documented
RF Range[1]
(no
obstructions)
Experimental Results
MICA
Motes
35m None of the messages sent from the internal mote were received by the external mote.
MICA2
Motes
916MHz
150m Some of the messages from the internal mote were received by the external mote. Messages
appeared to be transmitted successfully for periods at a time, then no reception for a short period.
Rather than random noise, this was likely due to movement of the capsule inside the rumen. When
the capsule was at the top of the rumen, and physically closer to the second mote, most of the
messages were received, but when the capsule moved further away, the messages stopped being
received. Reorientation of the external antenna also improved the reception at some times,
indicating that the CRD was indeed changing its orientation.
MICA2
Motes
433MHz
300m Most of the messages from the internal motes were received. Again, there were periods when nearly
all of the messages were received, and then periods when only a few odd messages were received
probably as a result of movement of the capsule within the rumen.




Fig. 2, which is used routinely for medicating animals, and
then inserted into the rumen via the cannula
2
.
The second mote was held in a variety of positions on the
outside of the animal, and visual observation was used to
determine whether the LEDs were flashing in accordance
with the counting application.
The experiment was conducted with first generation
MICA Motes, as well as with MICA2 Motes. Both the
916MHz and 433MHz radios were tested on the MICA2s.
In each case, estimates of radio transmissibility were made
from observations of the continuity of the LED sequence
on the external mote. These results are presented in Table
1.
The experiment indicated that radio transmission is
significantly hindered by the transmission medium.
Rotation of the capsule, and thus varying antenna
orientation, was another likely source of non-reception of
messages.
This experiment suggested MICA2s with 433MHz radios
would be satisfactory for communications from within the
stomach of a steer to an external Mote. Additionally, there
was the possibility of increasing the probability of
successful data transmission by both MAC layer and
antenna design improvements.
3.3. Experiment #3 Animal Health Monitoring
This experiment used three MICA2 Motes with 433MHz
radios, an MTS400 and an MTS420 sensor boards, and an
Ultralite for long distance communication. The three
motes were configured as follows:
Mote 1 - Attached to an MTS400 Environmental
Monitoring Board: Used to measures 2-axis
acceleration and temperature. This mote is

2
The capsule was inserted through the cannula to facilitate easy
insertion and retrieval of the device.
placed inside a CRD and inserted into the
steers rumen via a cannula. The sensors were
sampled every 8 seconds and the readings
transmitted to the base station mote.
Mote 2 - Attached to an MTS420 Environmental
Monitoring Board: Used to monitor GPS
location, temperature, pressure, humidity and 2-
axis acceleration. This mote captured data every
2 minutes and forwarded it to the base station.
Mote 3 - The base-station mote, whose task it was to
receive transmitted data from the other two
motes and forward it on to the Ultralite via an
MIB510 programming board and a serial cable.
The Ultralite maintained a connection to the server in
Canberra using GPRS[8] and transmit the sensor
information in real time. Fig. 4 provides a graphical
depiction of how the various pieces of hardware fit
together on the animal.
This proof of concept experiment ran over 36 hours and
gave us the animals position during two
afternoon/evening periods, a measure of external
environmental conditions, and intermittent data from the
internal sensors.
The plot in Fig. 3 shows the GPS information transmitted
from the external mote. Due to the high power
consumption of GPS, the batteries on this mote lasted
approximately 6 hours before they needed to be replaced.
While larger batteries can be used it seems a GPS sensor is
unsuitable for continuous monitoring of animal location in
a production environment where the sensor needs to last
years without servicing. Either relative position
monitoring, or other methods of localisation[12, 13] using
a small number of fixed beacons may be more suitable.
The GPS data shows us where the steer prefers to roam.
This data is useful for farmers in order to utilise their
grazing land with maximum efficiency by distributing
Smarty's Position
-36.64
-36.62
-36.6
-36.58
-36.56
-36.54
-36.52
32.52 32.54 32.56 32.58 32.6 32.62 32.64 32.66 32.68 32.7 32.72 32.74
Longitude in Minutes (151' E)
L
a
t
i
t
u
d
e

i
n

M
i
n
u
t
e
s

(
3
0
'

S
)
Water trough
Yard

Fig. 3. GPS Data over ~36 hours.



water troughs, trees and fodder appropriately.
Alternatively, the farmer may want to utilise land that the
animals never roam around in for other purposes.
The intra-rumenal movement plot, together with the
temperature plots in Fig. 5 shows that there was not a
continuous connection between the internal mote and the
database. The two critical communication links are
between the internal mote and the base mote, and the
GPRS connection between the Ultralite and the Internet.
The mobile infrastructure[8] logs all Ultralite connections
and disconnections. By correlating this data with the times
of data availability, we determined that for much of the
time the breakdown in communication occurred between
the internal mote and the base mote. Although there were a
significant number of connects and disconnects between
the Ultralite to the backend system, connections tended to
last for at least a few minutes each time longer than the
sampling period of the internal mote. As one can see in
Fig. 5, there are periods where data is received from the
external mote and not the internal mote, again indicating a
loss of communication between the internal mote and the
base-station. An internal logging facility is being planned
to buffer data during these periods of poor connectivity.
The plots in Fig. 5 indicate that the internal temperature
(two independent sensors were used for verification and
redundancy) rises upon inserting the capsule into the
animal as expected. It stabilises at the expected
temperature of ~38C as is seen by ~1:00pm and there is
an indication of a drinking even at around 4:30pm (which
is correlated with the GPS location at that time together
with the known location of the water trough). In the first
experiment we demonstrated a relationship between the
volume of water ingested and the change in rumen
temperature. The drop in temperature shown in Fig. 5
being less than that shown in Fig. 1 is an indication that
the animal drank less water.
External temperature is also plotted in Fig. 5.
Unfortunately, the plastic box housing the external
temperature probe acted like a greenhouse on the animals
back, causing this measurement to be higher than the
actual outside temperature on the day. It is still interesting
to note that the temperature did fall sharply very soon after
the sun dropped over the horizon late in the afternoon. For
similar reasons, the humidity and pressure readings from
the external sensor were not particularly meaningful.
Fig. 6 shows intra-rumenal movement using a dual-axis
accelerometer and a sampling period of 8 seconds.
Although there is an indication of very slow movement,
we suspect that the sampling frequency is considerably
slower than some of the frequency components of the
digestive movement, so the data does not necessarily fully
characterise rumenal movement. Physical observation also
shows that even within the rumen digesta, one of the three
stomachs, there is considerable difference in the rate of
movement in different places, at different times in the
animals feeding cycle, and with differing amounts of water
in the rumen. Therefore further experimentation will be
required to fully characterise rumen movement.
Although not plotted, since no meaningful data was
gathered, the accelerometers on the external mote could be
used to provide a variety of valuable data. Firstly, by
placing one axis of the accelerometer along the length of
the animals neck, a grazing clock could be developed to
monitor feeding behaviour, and similarly if strapped to a
leg or on the rump, it could act as a pedometer to measure
distance travelled. Alternatively, placed anywhere
horizontally on a bull it could be used to identify a mating
activity, which, when used in conjunction wit the
positional identity of cow, could be used to subsequently
indicate parentage. In this way, a farmer would have
instant knowledge of mating and would bring him a step
closer to being able to control breeding.

Fig. 4. Instrumentation of Smarty the steer.



4. Future Work
There are a few avenues we consider are worth pursuing in
this area, and each of them is discussed below.
4.1. Technical Improvements
As witnessed in the third experiment, the radio
transmission between the internal mote and the base node
is not particularly reliable. The antennae used were
standard wave dipole without any modification. We
believe the transmission radius can be improved by using a
dipole antenna. Different antenna shapes and
configurations may also boost antenna output although
there is limited possibility here due to the small size of the
drug release capsule.
A second area of potential technical improvement is the
MAC layer protocol. An enhanced MAC layer with a
suitable retry system would increase the probability of
messages getting transmitted successfully. Additionally,
we would like to implement internal logging on the motes
so that when the mote is out of range of the base node, the
measurements are buffered.
There are also plans to implement buffering on the
Ultralite in order to prevent loss of data when the animal
wanders into a GSM black-spot.
4.2. Renewable Energy
Physical observation shows movement within the rumen
digesta to be similar to that of a washing machine. This
movement could be used as a source of energy to power
the internal Mote for the life of the animal. Further work is
required to characterise this movement and assess methods
of harvesting power from it. This work needs to include
sampling at much higher frequencies than the acceleration
sampling period of 8 seconds used in this experiment as
higher frequency movements could be used as a source of
energy[14].
Particularly when utilising GPS, power requirements of
the electronics external to the animal are also a concern.
Perhaps, a renewable energy source, such as solar, would
be of most benefit as this allows for longer term
autonomous operation.
4.3. Larger Scaled, Multi-homed Deployment
The ultimate goal of creating an animal health monitoring
system is to monitor a representative sample and ideally
all the cattle on a farm, not just a single steer. We have a
number of ideas of how to extend this experiment to
monitor many cows without duplicating all the equipment
on each steer.
One idea is to have one animal with the equipment as per
this experiment, and the rest of the animals with only an
internal sensor. This would be suitable for animal
instrumentation where we are concerned with internal
health and biological parameters, and not their position or
Internal Temperature
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34
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38
40
9/06/2004 11:20 9/06/2004 12:40 9/06/2004 14:00 9/06/2004 15:20 9/06/2004 16:40 9/06/2004 18:00
Time
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(
d
e
g
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C
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)
Intersema Temperature Probe Sensiron Temperature Probe External Mote Temperature

Fig. 5. Intra-rumenal temperature over an afternoon.
Intra-Rumenal Acceleration & Movement
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0
500
1000
1500
2000
9/06/2004 11:16 9/06/2004 11:31 9/06/2004 11:45 9/06/2004 12:00 9/06/2004 12:14 9/06/2004 12:28 9/06/2004 12:43 9/06/2004 12:57 9/06/2004 13:12 9/06/2004 13:26
Time
m
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X Axis Acceleration Y Axis Acceleration

Fig. 6. Intra-rumenal movement over two ~30 minute periods.



other external measurements. For this to work though, one
would require an improvement in radio transmission range
to ensure the internal mote from one animal, can
successfully transmit data to the external mote on another
animal, potentially many metres away. Alternatively, each
head of cattle have both an internal and an external mote.
The internal mote would transmit measurements to the
external mote, and the external mote would transmit the
data on to the gateway animal, the one fitted with an
Ultralite. Alternatively, rather than having a single animal
with an Ultralite, acting as a gateway, one could
instrument a small proportion of the animals as gateway
nodes, and the rest as sensing only nodes.
On another project we are developing soil moisture
sensors with mote technology for communications and it is
envisaged that in an instrumented farm there will also be
many other networked sensors. The cattle operating within
this network can be mobile nodes in that network. We
could locate a number of fixed gateway nodes within this
network and each animal in the herd would transmit its
data, potentially using multi-hop, to the nearest gateway.
5. Conclusion
In this paper we have described our ongoing work in
animal monitoring using wireless technologies. There is a
recognised need to provide farmers with relatively
autonomous methods of monitoring the health of their
herd, and learning about the behaviour of their animals in
order to create a productive environment. Animals,
unfortunately, are not always able to communicate health
issues such as rumenal fermentation problems or varying
micro-biota levels. Nor are farmers always able to
discover (and possibly control) breeding patterns within
herds. Visual monitoring of animals provides a very
limited view of what is happening, and is rather inefficient
as it cannot always be done 24/7. Autonomous monitoring
is required to learn the things about the animals that visual
inspection does not always tell us. This will enable new
stock management techniques like varying stocking ratios
based on animal behaviour rather than a visual assessment
of pasture quality.
By using the mobile telephone network for long distance
communication, and a wireless sensor network for short
distance communication, we have begun to create a
platform which can be used for both external and internal
monitoring of animals. Monitoring of vital health signs,
eating and drinking habits, and location and movement in
real time brings farmers and scientists a step closer to
understanding animals better, and making farms more
productive.
Our initial experiments have shown that intra-rumenal
monitoring can be done by enclosing probes a Berkeley
MICA2 Mote with attached sensors in a drug control
release capsule which can be dosed to the animal orally.
This device can communicate wirelessly with a module on
the animals back and together with external probes, can
provide a comprehensive picture of the animals health
and activities.

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