WIP: Optimizing Solar-powered BLE Beacons for Wildlife Monitoring

Abstract

Animal-mounted sensors are one of the existing methods used to monitor the collective behavior of animals in the wild. While they have the benefit of transmitting location data directly from the animal’s position, they have the disadvantage of being bulky and limited in terms of capacity. This paper presents a method to overcome these drawbacks by eliminating battery usage in an outdoor environment through the use of an optimized solar powered beacon. Our goal is to eliminate battery usage while maintaining operational requirements and continuity. Our results show that we can achieve a 2-minute broadcast frequency under various weather and shade conditions, without any application downtime or battery need.